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THEIR 



BOYHOOD AND EARLY LIFE. 



£&. 




EXTRAORDINARY MEN 



TUKIK 



IWljoob anb (L : ;irlii pfe, 



By WILLIAM RUSSELL, Esq. 




Ktttn numerous portraits 8c IZlIustratilJC Sngfafrfngs. 



LONDON: 
INGRAM, COOKE, AND CO. 

AM) ALL BOOKSELLER. 

1853. 



^ 






LIST OF BIOGRAPHIES. 



PAGE 

Michael Angelo 9 

Martin Luther IS 

Shakspere 27 

Oliver Cromwell 41 

Moliere 51 

Blaise Pascal .... - 57 

The Duke of Marlborough 69 

Peter the Great 78 

Franklin ' . . 89 

Mirabeau 104 

Mozart 116 

Sir Samuel Romilly 127 

Nelson 142 

Robert Burns 158 

Sir Thomas Lawrence 175 

Wilkie 1S5 

Napoleon Bonaparte 195 

Lord Byron 211 

The Duke of Wellington 22S 

Sir Robert Peel 244 

Louis Philippe 259 

Dr. William Ellery Channing 279 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 



PAGE 
11 



Michael Angelo studying the stars 

Luther meeting with womanly sympathy from the wife of Conrad . . 23 

William Shakspere courting Anne Hathaway 38 

Fight between Oliver Cromwell and Prince Charles, (afterwards Charles I.) 48 
Moliere at Church 

Pascal drawing geometrical figures on the floor of his room 63 

Marlborough soliciting a commission from the Duke of York .... 72 

Peter the Great finding a sanctuary S4 

Franklin's first visit to Philadelphia 97 

Mirabeau giving the old man the hat 110 

Mozart discovered composing a concerto 119 

Samuel Romilly reading his translation of Virgil 13i 

Nelson floating his ships at school 146 

Burns taking the sun's altitude 1 _ 

Sir Thomas Lawrence painting the farmers' portraits 176 

Wilkie presenting his sketches to the Secretary of the Edinburgh Academy 190 
Napoleon and his school-fellows' escape to Brienne fair through a breach 

made in the wall 

Byron watching Miss Chaworth dancing 225 

Wellington at school .... 

2oo 

Sir Robert Peel repeating sermons to his father 252 

Untractableness of Louis Philippe 26 - 

Dr. Channing's kindliness of disposition exhibited 2S3 



PREFACE. 



Biographies of extraordinary boys, who were never anything 
but extraordinary boys, — pale blossoms which attracted 
admiration and commanded sympathy, solely because they 
were prematurely disclosed, — are numerous and minute 
enough; but the young morning of a great life, whose 
frequently dull and menacing clouds, or faint pencillings of 
radiant light, have been dissipated or eclipsed by its noon- 
tide splendour, has been, in the majority of cases, slightingly 
glanced at by historiographers of the extraordinary men who 
have made their names famous in the world. Yet the earlier 
portion of the lives of such men, albeit they had not then 
fought great battles, or wrested mighty world-changing secrets 
from nature's jealous custody, — although their dramas, poems, 
songs, paintings, statues, were as yet but vague and dim 
perceptions of the noble and beautiful in spiritual and 
material being, — must have been in every instance a greatly 
influencing one, whether for good or evil, — without 
the careful study of which, an accurate appreciation of the 
hero's man-life can hardly be attained. The following brief, 
unpretending sketches, therefore, of the boyhood of a few 
only of the extraordinary men who have left deep and en- 
during traces in the memory of mankind, if effecting little 



VU1 PREFACE. 

towards supplying the deficiency in this branch of biogra- 
phical literature, may at least serve to indicate the large- 
ness of the void, if any, by the manifest inadequacy of the 
attempt to fill it up, and possibly suggest to future historic 
portrait-painters that^ the true expression of the moral 
features they would delineate can never be precisely attained 
unless the shadow-light, if such a phrase is permissible, of 
boyhood be permitted to fall over, and temper and define 
the dazzling and often distorting lustre of virile achieve- 
ment. Several famous names have been omitted from this 
volume, not alone from limitation of space, but that their 
boyhood is an entire blank in their life histories, — a sin of 
omission with which, it must be admitted, late biographers 
are much less chargeable than former or earlier ones ; — and 
a defect all the more to be regretted, that in almost eveiy 
case it may fairly be presumed, — -judging from modern expe- 
rience, — that the stains and shadows which defile and dim not 
a few of the coronals of genius, would, in the eyes of a just 
charity, be greatly attenuated, if they did not wholly dis- 
appear, had the imperious influences by which they were 
stamped upon the mind, when most flexile and impression- 
able, been faithfully recorded. This, at least, is my belief, 
and in the spirit of that faith I have written the subjoined 
memoirs of men whom the inherent force of a great intel- 
lect, or the accident of position and circumstance, have raised 
to lofty places in the Temple of Fame. 

W. R. 

London, May, 1853. 






(fefmrtittarg fife 




MICHAEL ANGELO. 



TI/TICHAEL ANGELO BTJONAROTTI, sculptor of tlie 
-"-*- Moses, painter of Tlie Last Judgment in the Sistine 
Chapel, and architect of the Cupola of St. Peter's, Rome, was 
born on the Gth of March, 1474, at the castle of Caprese, in 
Tuscany, of parents so illustrious in descent and alliances, — 
their ancestors were Counts of Canossa, and imperial blood 
flowed in their veins, — that when their son evinced, as he early 
did, a desire to follow the path traced for him by the dawniug 
light of the brilliant powers, which in their noon of strength 
achieved the magnificent works just enumerated, they vehe- 
mently objected to his taking such a course, insisting that 

B 



10 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

the highest artistic fame would but stain and degrade the 
escutcheon of then princely race, — a princely race now only 
remembered because Michael Angelo the great epic artist 
chanced to be numbered amongst them. 

The instinct of genius in the young noble's breast, stimu- 
lated and nourished by occasional companionship in the 
studies of Francesco Granacci, a pupil of the brothers Ghir- 
landia, professors of painting and design in Florence, was 
too powerful to be overcome by appeals to the vulgar vanity 
of birth, or the less illusive dreams of worthy ambition, 
and his father, Ludovico di Leonardo Buonarotti, essayed as 
a last resource, we are told, what virtue there might be in the 
oracular vaticinations of astrological science, — a potent in- 
fluence in those days, by the way — to dissuade his son from 
persisting in the plebeian pursuits for which he displayed so 
provoking an aptitude and liking. With this view he caused 
the young Michael's horoscope to be calculated and drawn, 
which, when carefully prepared, set forth, in the usual jargon 
of such documents, that by the combination, conjunction, 
and opposition of the planets which ruled his birth — 
Jupiter, Mercury, and Yenus, promised power, riches and 
fortunate love, with lengthened occupancy of the house of 
life, but were opposed by the malign influence of Mars, 
which in this instance indicated struggle, danger, and un- 
timely death. These meanings were simplified in the weird 
commentary which followed upon those starry aspects, by 
which it plainly appeared that Mars, relatively to Michael 
Angelo Buonarotti, signified undignified endeavour — any 
laborious exertion unusual for nobles to engage in ; whatever 
pursuit, in fact, had a tendency to diverge from the primrose 
path of life illumined and gilded by the mild yet mighty in- 
fluences of Yenus, Mercury, and Jupiter. 



MICHAEL AXGELO. 



11 




Michael Angelo possessed the faculties of reverence and 
wonder in a high degree — had it not been so the marvels of 
his artist-life could not have been accomplished — and this 
formidable horoscope having been placed in his hands when 
he was but just turned of thirteen years of age, it is not 
surprising that his unripe judgment was momentarily im- 
posed upon, and that he retired to his turret chamber in the 
Castle, hi a state of great agitation and distress. Night 
arrayed in the cloudless silver sheen and dazzling diadem oi 

b 2 



12 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

stars she wears in southern climes, surprised him, whilst still 
irresolutely pondering the fateful horoscope, and invited him 
to come and look forth with his own eyes upon the jnanet- 
scroll, wherein it was said his destiny was written. He did 
so j and presently perceiving that of the ruling heavenly 
"bodies he had been reading of, Mars alone, and in unusual 
splendour, was visible — he forthwith, so runneth the story — 
determined to walk for the future by the light of the hero- 
star, whithersoever it might lead him ! 

Possibly this is only a fanciful mode of describing the 
young Michael's victorious resistance to his father's counsel 
— that he should prefer a life of inglorious courtly ease to 
one of laborious endeavour; but, be this as it may, it is cer- 
tain that the active opposition of Ludovico Buonarotti to his 
son's adoption of the profession of a painter, was overcome by 
1488, in the April of which year Michael Angelo was placed 
for three years in the studio of Doininico and David Ghir- 
landia, by whom he was received without a premium, a clear 
proof that his artistic power had been already observed, and 
in some degree appreciated, by men whose opinion was of 
value in the matter. The expectations formed by these 
masters of then distinguished pupil, high as they might have 
been, were more than realized. They had soon nothing to 
teach him — as was quite manifest from his picture in oil, of 
Saint Antony beaten by devils — imps of every imaginable 
shape, attitude, and character — completed before half the 
stipulated three years had elapsed. He had ever been of a 
devout turn of mind, and was now accustomed to spend many 
hours in the Chapel del Carmine, of Florence, alternately 
copying or studying the pictures there by Masaccio, and 
kneeling in prayer on the outer steps of the sanctuary, or 
before the statue of a saint, for inspiration in his art, and 



MICHAEL ANGELO. 13 

grace to consecrate its exercise to the glory of God and Holy 
Church. His immense superiority to the other students, and 
his religious cast of mind, whilst exciting the admiration and 
sympathy of the generous and pious-minded amongst them, 
aroused in the breasts of others the bitterest hatred and 
ridicule. One of these, of the name of Torregiano, a rude 
scoffer and dull pupil, displayed a rancorous malignity 
towards Michael Angelo, which a retort of the youthful 
artist exasperated beyond control. Torregiano broke in upon 
some remarks regarding the brilliant future which in all pro- 
bability awaited the painter of Saint Antony's temptation, 
by coarsely observing that, " Buonarotti had no doubt a sym- 
pathetic talent for the accurate delineation of whatever was 
obscene and horrible." "You are mistaken," rejoined Mi- 
chael Angelo, with an unmoved quietude of manner, which 
added to the force and keenness of the sarcasm. " You are 
mistaken. There is one subject which no genius for the 
obscene and horrible could adequately portray — that of an 
atheist mother teaching her child to lisp blasphemy and 
atheism." A fierce blow on the face, the mark of which 
Michael Angelo carried to his grave, was the reply to this 
taunt, and it was with difficulty that Torregiano was pre- 
vented from resorting to still greater violence. The indig- 
nation excited by this outrage was so great tliat Torregiano 
was ultimately compelled to leave Florence, in avoidance of a 
greater penalty. 

The munificent Lorenzo de Medici about this time opened 
extensive gardens and pleasure grounds to the citizens of 
Florence, which he furnished with statues, busts, bas-reliefs, 
and other antique sculptures. Thither Michael Angelo, im- 
mediately the stipulated term with the brothers Ghirlandia 
had expired, constantly resorted, and a passionate enthusiasm 



14 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

for modelling figures in clay superseded for a time his devo- 
tion to palette and pencils. One day he found the dilapidated 
figure of a fawn thrown by as a thing of slight value, and the 
fancy seized him of opening the animal's mouth, and giving 
the face a comic expression, as of a human being laughing. 
Lorenzo de Medici heard of this odd transformation, and 
hastened to examine the young sculptor's coup d'essai with 
the chisel. He saw at a glance the indications of sculptural 
genius which the execution of the droll idea displayed, but 
contented himself with saying somewhat coldly, " Yery well, 
indeed, my young friend, but there is nevertheless one great 
fault in your work. Your fawn seems to be an old one, and 
yet it has all its teeth, which you know is never the case, 
after a certain age." Michael Angelo, nettled perhaps by 
Lorenzo's frigid manner, exclaimed with some heat, — " That 
defect is soon remedied," and instantly struck out several of 
the fawn's teeth with his mallet and chisel. Lorenzo smiled 
and passed]on, but the next da}>- gave unequivocal proof of his 
appreciation of the impatient Michael's genius, by requesting 
his father to resign him wholly to the care of the family of 
the Medici, who would charge themselves with his further 
education and advancement. This request was instantly 
acceded to by Leonardo Buonarotti, and Michael Angelo 
devoted [himself with renewed zeal to perfect himself as a 
sculptor. The astonishing progress he made, evidenced by 
the early production of the bas-relief of the Centaurs, was 
interrupted by the death of his Mend and patron, Lorenzo 
de Medici, whose loss to Florence and the arts was ill sup- 
plied by his brother Pietro, a volatile debauchee, who cared 
for little but sensuous gratifications and pursuits. As if in 
mockery of an art which he was incapable of appreciating, he 
employed Michael Angelo in modelling statues of snow, — a 



illCHAEL ANGELO. 15 

senseless caprice which induced the enthusiastic artist to 
accept a commission from the prior of the conventual church 
of the Holy Spirit at Florence, to paint two pictures of the 
crucifixion for that edifice. A labour of reverent love this 
proved to the pious painter, the guiding maxim of whose life 
appears to have been the sentiment which trembled from his 
lips, at the moment of death, in his eighty-ninth year : — " In 
your passage through life, bear always in mind the sufferings 
of Christ." He worked at the pictures in the church, and in 
order that the figures might be as life-like, — or rather, death- 
like as possible, he obtained permission of the prior to have 
the coffins of the newly-buried opened and placed beside him 
during the night, — an appalling expedient, certainly, — but 
enabling him to reproduce with terrible effect, not the mortal 
pallor only, but the anatomy of death visible in the relaxation 
and repose of muscle exhibited by a corpse. Soon after 
finishing tins work, Michael Angel o quitted Florence for the 
first time, and executed two statues at Bologna for the 
Dominican church there, and thenceforth became rapidly 
famous in the world. 

Those night studies in the convent church must, no doubt, 
have aided in perfecting the anatomical accuracy which marks 
the after productions of Michael Angelo, both in painting 
and statuary; and one plainly enough perceives the early 
footsteps of this astonishing genius, in the giant career 
which, in sculpture, reached from the bas-relief of the Cen- 
taurs, to the lofty and serene grandeur of the Moses — in 
painting, from St. Antony beaten by devils, to the Last 
Judgment. But we peruse his youth in vain for a prelimi- 
nary indication of the stupendous architectural power, which, 
finding Saint Peter's to consist of the huge, fragmentary, 
partially developed conceptions of two preceding architects, 



16 EXTRAORDINARY MEX. 

Branorarte and San Gallo, fused the apparently incongruous 
details into a majestic whole, harmonized, and crowned by 
the magnificent Cupola, which would alone suffice for the 
glory of a life ! It is not surprising that, under the circum- 
stances, Catholic legends should assert that the design for 
Saint Peter's was furnished to Michael Angelo by the Arch- 
angel whose name he received in baptism. — But there is 
another marvel, a very inferior one, no doubt, but still a 
marvel, achieved by the artist's seemingly instinctive sagacity, 
inasmuch as he certainly had no preceptor in the art of mili- 
tary engineering, that ean hardly be imputed to direct celes- 
tial agency, namely, the fortifications of Florence, which in 
a time of danger the unanimous and undoubting voices of 
his fellow-citizens called upon the painter — the sculptor — 
the architect, forthwith to construct ! He accepted the 
task, and performed it, according to the paramount testimony 
of Yauban, with entire success, both in principle and detail. 
Michael Angelo, moreover, composed a large quantity of 
rhymed and measured verse ; but he could only incarnate 
Poetry in form and colour, — not in words, for which im- 
measurably higher and much rarer faculties are required. 

Michael Angelo was contemporary with Martin Luther, 
having come into the world some nine years before, and left 
it long after the great Reformer. There is, too, a diverse 
coincidence, so to speak, in the lives of these two celebrated 
men, which may be worth remarking, inasmuch that whilst 
Martin Luther was shaking the spiritual temple of Borne to 
its foundations, Michael Angelo was raising aloft its material 
type, in unrivalled magnificence and majesty. For this 
great service to the Papacy, he refused to receive the 
slightest pecuniary recompence • the noble aspirations which 
we have seen decided him, at an early age, to realize, in 



MICHAEL ASTGELO. IT 

opposition to his father's wishes, the fabled choice of Her- 
cules, sustained by the fervent, if in form mistaken, piety, 
which breathed in the boy-prayers offered up in the Chapel 
del Carmine, at Florence, having proved their own exceeding 
great reward, by enabling him to inscribe upon the tablet 
which records the few imperishable names of earth, that of 
Michael Angelo Buonarotti. 





MARTIN LUTHER. 



II /TARTIN LUTHER, a name which breaks upon the ear 
-*-'-*- like the distant booming of a signal cannon, or of a rising 
sea — so intimately is it associated with impressions of a great 
conflict — of a mighty rising up of nations against powers and 
dominions hoary with prescriptive reverence — of the breaking 
down of strongholds presumedly rock-based, and reaching to 
the heavens— derives this illustration only from the reliable 
facts known of the great Reformer's boyhood; that they 
clearly show that the stormy and dangerous career which he 
entered upon in mature life was unsought for, undesired by 
him, and solely prompted by a suddenly awakened, imperious 
sense of duty — strengthened and aided, no doubt, by an 



MARTIN LUTHER. 19 

instinctive consciousness of vast mental energy, and an 
inflexible bravery of will, which no peril could disturb, no 
obstacle, however giant-like and apparently insuperable, 
bend or turn aside. 

As frequently happens with individuals in whose history 
mankind take the deepest interest, the exact place and date of 
Luther's birth have been a subject of eager controversy; nay, 
the correct orthography of his name is still in dispute — he 
himself writing it indifferently as Luther, Luder, Lother. 
His own statement, moreover, as to where he was born is 
undoubtedly an error. " I am a peasant's son," he writes, " and 
my father, grandfather, and great-grandfather were all pea- 
sants. My father went to Mansfield, got employment in the 
mines there, and there I was born. That I should ever take 
the degree of Bachelor of Arts seemed not to be in the stars. 
How must I have surprised people by turning monk, and 
then again by changing the brown cap for another 1 By so 
doing I occasioned real grief and trouble to my father. 
Afterwards I went to loggers with the pope, married a run- 
away nun, and had a family. "Who foresaw this in the stars 1 
Who could have told my career beforehand ?" 

No one, assuredly: the career of Luther, though doubtless 
written in the heavens, cast no prophetic shadow upon earth, 
and it is quite vain to look for serpents strangled in the 
cradle of the spiritual Hercules ; but inquiry has enabled the 
historiographer of his life-revealed destiny to ascertain that 
Martin Luther was born at Eisleben, when his mother was 
on her way to Mansfield. The date of his birth, though dis- 
puted by certain astrological opponents of the Reformation, 
who will] have it that it took place on the 22nd of October 
1483 — in order to connect it with some sinister conjunction 
of five planets in that day or night \ but for which skyey 



20 EXTRAORDINARY MEET. 

influences it would appear Tetzel would never Lave preached 
indulgences, nor Luther been roused to denounce them — really 
occurred on the 10th of November, 1483 — nearly three weeks 
subsequent to the heretical council held by the five stars. 

The actual circumstances surrounding the birth of Luther 
are, however, noteworthy and interesting. His father, Hans 
(John) Luther, was bom and grew to manhood at Mcerk, 
a Saxon village near Eisenach. He was a poor miuer, and 
married the daughter of a lawyer of needy condition there. 
Her name was Gretha (Margaret), and she was a native of 
Neustadt in Franconia, where her family had previously 
resided. Hans Luther had the misfortune, it is said, acciden- 
tally to kill a man whilst at work in a meadow — an incident 
which rests upon slight authority, and if true, may involve 
no imputation upon the involuntary homicide. Be this cir- 
cumstance, however, an invention or a verity, it is certain that 
Hans and Gretha Luther quitted Mcerk hurriedly in the 
winter of 1483, on foot, albeit Gretha was near her confine- 
ment. The purpose of Hans Luther, which he happily suc- 
ceeded in, was to obtain employment in the mines at Mans- 
field ; but his wife, overcome by fatigue and anxiety, could 
reach no further than Eisleben, where she was delivered of 
her sen, Martin, at about eleven o'clock, Melancthon assures 
us, upon the authority of the mother herself, on the evening 
of the 10th November, 1483. As soon as it was possible to 
do so, the wife proceeded to Mansfield, where her son was 
baptised, — and hence, doubtless, Luther's misapprehension as 
to his place of birth. 

"Very industrious, worthy people were the poor miner Hans 
Luther and his wife. Spite of their extreme poverty, they 
contrived to keep their son at school, stimulated thereto, it is 
fan to presume, by the glancing forth of some sparkles of the 



MARTIX LUTHER. 21 

fiery intellect which was thereafter to set Europe in a blaze. 
They were assisted in this by one Dame Ursula, the widow 
of John Scheiveicken, who hoped the promising talents of the 
boy might one day be dedicated to the service of Holy 
Church, as indeed they were, though not precisely in the 
mode which the good dame would probably have chosen. 
Luther's education commenced essentially at Magdeburgh, a 
place which faintly glimmers in the memory of the world as 
the prison-fortress of Baron Trenck and General Lafayette. 
Thence he was transferred to Eisenach, in Thuringia, and 
finally to Erfurth, and while studying for the law in the 
University there, what seemed a direct call from God him- 
self summoned him to a conventual life, and the office of the 
priesthood. 

All that Luther's parents could spare from their scanty 
earnings, helped by the contributions of Dame Ursula, ill suf- 
ficed to defray the cost of his maintenance at school — slight 
in English estimation as that would appear. Like other 
similarly-situated German students of the time, he was accus- 
tomed to perambulate the streets of Magdeburgh, singing 
hymns and songs, interrupted, whenever a sympathising ear 
was likely to be reached, by cries of Panem propter? Deum 
(Bread for God's sake). Luther's love of music, like all other 
emotions that welled up from that fiercely pulsating heart, 
was a passion. " Music," he says, " is the art of the prophet, 
the only one which, like theology, can calm the trouble of the 
soul, and put the devil to flight." He had, moreover, a fine 
ear and pleasing voice, and his taste for the divine art was no 
doubt, in some degree, quickened by the means it afforded of 
improving his chance of obtaining Panem propter Deum. 
He learned to play the flute, and touched the lute also with 
considerable skill. " Bread-Music," he used to call Ins dis- 



22 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

plays in singing and instrumentation; — very frequently 
unsuccessful ones. Upon one occasion, whilst at Eisenach, 
he sallied forth with his lute, after having passed many hours 
without food, with the inspiriting hope that the influence of 
the bright day, shed down from the deep blue cloudless 
heavens, might dispose his hearers to sympathy and kindness. 
He was grievously mistaken. Hour after hour the future 
Apostle of the Reformation exerted both voice and fingers, — 
now soaring upon the winged harmonies of a Laudati, or an 
Alma; and therein unsuccessful, gliding gently down to the 
sweet sadness of a psalm, or the love breathings of a soul, 
touched by a more earthly devotion : — vain alike were can- 
ticle, psalm, and song ; and it seemed that on that particular 
day, the quiring of the cherubim must have failed to. move 
the purse-strings of the deaf-eared burghers of Eisenach. As 
a last effort, Martin wandered forth to the suburbs of the 
city, only to encounter the same ill success, and at one house 
of more pretentious aspect than others, a dog was loosed to 
drive away the unfortunate minstrel. Eainting with hunger, 
indignant, footsore, utterly disconsolate, Luther, after feebly 
tottering to some distance from the inhospitable mansion, 
threw himself upon a rustic bench, beneath tall shadowing 
elms in front of a cottage, and burst into passionate sobbing 
expression of the emotions of his soul, in the broken melody 
of an interpretative song. Conrad, the master of the cottage, 
was absent, but his wife was fortunately at home, and listened 
with womanly sympathy to the plaintive strains of the 
suffering student, whom she forthwith invited to enter the 
cottage, where he was plentifully regaled with such coarse 
but abundant fare as it contained. Luther never forgot this 
act of kindness, and frequently alluded to the circumstance 
in after life, as if he believed it to have been a special inter- 



MARTIN LUTHER. 



23 




position of Heaven in his favour. The good woman, like 
Luther himself at the time, was a Roman Catholic, and it 
seems, followed the Reformer in his change of faith, supposing 
that she was the occupant of the cottage, when, some twenty 
years subsequently to her charitable entertainment of the 
distressed minstrel, the sentence, " men have entertained angels 
unawares," was carved over the door-way. Though Luther 
chanced to meet with a beneficent spirit on this occasion, he 
was not always so fortunate in similar extremities, if we may 



24 EXTEAOEDINAKY MEN. 

believe the story of a garrulous monk, Steingel, a fierce 
denouncer of the pestilent " Heresiarch." " In the year 1501," 
writes this veracious chronicler, "just before the Heresiarch, 
Luther, went to Erfurth, he was wandering in a forest, 
hungry in belly, and disturbed in mind, and presently throw- 
ing himself upon a bank, bemoaned his hard fate with loud 
and piteous lamentings, forgetful that a pater or an ave 
would have stood him in better stead. At this moment 
Sathanas appeared suddenly before the Heresiarch, not in his 
own natural bodily likeness, as he did afterwards, when he 
and Luther were better acquainted, but in the semblance of a 
beautiful child, with fair skin, blue eyes, and golden hair, and 
tendered his helpmate that was to be, a large apple, which, 
upon eagerly snatching and eating thereof, he foraid to be of 
delicious flavour, and affording marvellous nourishment, and, 
what should have warned him of the devilish device, did not 
diminish, in size, though he ate his fill thereof ! ' How do 
you feel now?' asked Sathanas, speaking by the voice of the 
child. ( Proud as an emperor, strong as a lion,' replied the 
Heresiarch. ' Methinks I could break down this tree ;' and 
thereupon striving at a mighty oak tree, wherefrom, however, 
he could only shake down with all his force a few dead 
leaves and withered branches. ' The fruit,' said the fiend's 
voice, 'contains the essence and principle of self-confidence 
and pride, and is a sovereign cure for all faintness of body 
and humility of spirit. It will last as long as you desire it, 
and will never lose its virtue.' Having said this, the child, 
that is, the devil, vanished into the air, of which he is the 
prince, and it was by continually eating of the accursed fruit 
so given him, that the Heresiarch nourished his pride, and 
hardened his heart against the warnings and counsels of holy 
men." This narrative of Steingel's, is rather a favourable 



MAETIX LTJTHES. 25 

specimen of the thousand and one stories circulated, ay, and 
believed by tens of thousands of simple people to this day of 
Luther. One intimation it contains is, at all events, correct; 
— that Martin Luther left Eisenach for Erfurth in 1501, 
where his mode of life appears to have resembled his previous 
one, — intensely studious, by fits and starts, — moody, — rest- 
less, except when under the influence of music or wine, — and 
latterly, a strong devotional bias, untinged by the slightest 
doubt relative to the dogmas of the Church of Rome or the 
attributes of the papacy, vividly manifested itself. His man- 
ners, albeit, were still boisterous, noisy, roystering, like most 
students of his age, — and whoso had seen him in the third 
week of Lent, 1503, swaggering on his road homewards, 
accoutred with a hunting knife and a sword that was 
perpetually getting between his legs, and shouting, singing, 
gesticulating with gleeful rollicking mirth, could hardly have 
imagined they were looking upon one destined to shake the 
papal throne to its foundation, and rend away some of the 
brightest jewels of the triple crown. 

Yet was the hand of time already close upon the signal- 
hour whose thunder-stroke was to rouse Luther from the 
vacant dreams of boyhood to the perception of his allotted 
life-task — dim and clouded for awhile with the lingering im- 
pressions of his youth-slumber, but gradually brightening till 
its giant reach and lofty significance stood out full and clear 
in the great Future. That he was approaching a crisis of 
some kind in his life appears to have for some time strongly 
impressed his imagination ; his law-studies had been thrown 
aside ; the light literature in which he had always taken plea- 
sure palled upon his fancy, and except in bodily exercise, and 
the practice of music, he found no respite from the disquietude 
by which his mind was haunted. At last the turning-point 

c 



26 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

of life was reached. He was standing in a field with a fellow- 
student on a bright day of summer, July 17, 1505, discoursing 
of life, death, and judgment to come — seeking by reasoning to 
lighten somewhat to themselves the burthen of the mystery 
of existence and futurity, when suddenly thunder rolled in 
the previously unclouded sky, and the next moment Luther's 
companion was struck dead, at his side, by lightning ! The 
awe-stricken survivor uttered a loud cry — a cry which was 
a thanksgiving, and vow to Saint Anne, — so instinctively 
and entirely. Catholic still was he, — that he would immedi- 
ately turn a Monk ! 

When the first consternation caused by this terrible inci- 
dent had subsided, Luther did not in the slightest degree 
waver in his purpose. He passed the earlier part of the 
evening as usual with his friends, and at about 9 o'clock 
withdrew to a convent of Augustine Monks at Erfurth — his 
sole wealth a Plautus and a Yirgil. The monastic vows 
were pronounced by the zealous neophyte after the usual 
interval of probation, though much against the wishes and 
advice of his father, Hans Luther, who was not for a long 
time reconciled to the irrevocable step — as it then appeared 
to be — which his son persisted in taking. A copy of the 
New Testament came into the young Monk's hands soon 
afterwards, and the cloistered seclusion of the Augustine 
Convent became from that hour the birth- womb of the 
Reformation. 




SHAKSPERE. 



CJUNLIGHT falls upon the paper with this transcendant 
^ name ; the atmosphere pulsates and sparkles with a fresher, 
more radiant light, and as by the wave of an enchanter's wand 
the scene is changed to a fairy-like land peopled with undying 
habitants, gifted, immortally, with eloquence which a seraph 
might stoop to hear, wit and humour to shake the dullest 
earth-clod with convulsive merriment, — pathos to melt with 
sympathy the flintiest of human hearts. Undying, did I say? 
Not only are they exempt from the slightest taint of mor- 
tality, but, like Swedenborg's fabled angels, they become 
positively younger, brighter, — of more buoyant, vigorous life 
as the years flit past them. There is the Lady Beatrice, 
whose silvery laugh rings joyously from yonder glade, — it is 

c 2 



28 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

more than thirty years since I first knew that lady, and I 
solemnly affirm — but thousands of others will tell you the 
same thing — that she is livelier, wittier, more delightful, 
youthful, beautiful, every time one sees and hears her. It 
is the same with. Rosalind, who is seldom far off, when I 
at least meet with Beatrice; they are, I fancy, sisters, 
or at all events very nearly related. Like all the other 
denizens of this enchanted land, they will appear at your 
wish, and in such passage of their lives as you may choose, — 
Rosalind in her forest dress or wedding tires — Juliet in the 
balcony, or at the tomb, — Hamlet with the ghost upon the 
battlements, or cleaving his mother's heart in twain with 
dagger-speech, — Lady Macbeth with the queen's look which 
makes one's heart leap as she turns from the messenger who 
has just announced the approach of Duncan, or, when wring- 
ing her crimson hands in the sleep-conscious agony of a 
despair unutterable ; — yes, that is glorious Sir John ; no one 
can mistake that voice, though he did injure it in singing 
anthems some three hundred years ago; and he has as keen 
a relish, for sack, too, as ever, spite of his vows of amendment 

and determination not to be d d for never a king's son in 

Christendom. Ah ! my friend, this is the only true and great 
and constant world. No fear of encountering here changed 
looks and speech — frowns usurping the place of smiles, — no 
apprehension that the celestial goddess of to-day shall to- 
morrow be proved, by some detestable revelation, to have 
long been no better than she ought to be ! Even of the bad 
— the Iagos, Shylocks, the very worst is known — they medi- 
tate no new villanies ; neither shall rare Bottom be ( trans- 
lated' otherwise than you wot of, nor divine Isabel be required 
to plead with seraph eloquence for the life of more than one 
weak, sinful brother ! Who would not wish to dwell for ever 



SHAKSPERE. 29 

in such a -world? and assuredly slight cause for wonder is 
there that it should be thronged with such hourly-increasing 
multitudes, not of the Anglo-Saxon race alone, millions of 
whom are dwellers by the setting sun, but by the great Ger- 
manic and Scandinavian races; ay, and of late the modern 
Gauls muster here by tens of thousands. This multitudinous 
affluence has been no doubt in some degree increased by the 
riddance at last, with much difficulty effected, of the show- 
men who infested the place, some of them wearing right- 
reverend, and learned wigs and gowns, who were perpetually 
bawling out some absurd impertinence or other as to what 
should or should not be admired, — whom sought after and 
whom avoided. Expostulation or argument was thrown 
away upon those fellows; and they were only at last driven 
off, or silenced, by the inextinguishable peals of involuntary 
laughter which latterly arose whenever they ventured to 
open their lips. Our German relatives, who are tremendous 
laughers when they once begin, were of great service in this 
matter. But here comes honest Dogberry with the watch, 
whose duty it is to apprehend all " vagrom men f you and I 
had therefore better retire for awhile; and see, it is only 
closing the magic volume in my hand, and we are forthwith 
upon the dull, common earth again ! 

The earth whereon Shakspere passed his brief mundane 
existence, and left such slight impress of his merely mortal 
footsteps, that according to some of his historiographers all 
that is positively known of William Shakspere is, that he was 
born at Stratford-upon-Avon, went to London in early man- 
hood, wrote plays, and greatly prospered there, and finally 
returned to die, a wealthy man, in his native place. This is, 
no doubt, an incorrect statement, at present, but not likely 
long to remain so, if the perverse ingenuity of enthusiastic 



30 EXTRAORDINARY MEN'. 

biographers be permitted unchallenged to argue and refine 
away every fact which does not precisely chime with then- 
own notions of what Shakspere's youth and Shakspere's 
parentage should have been, and to substitute their own 
fancies for less picturesque realities. One important circum- 
stance is at all events beyond dispute : The parish register 
proves that William Shakspere, son of John Shakspere — 
c Gulielmus filius Johannes Shakspere? was baptised on the 
26th of April, 1564, though, whether according to tradi- 
tionary belief the child was then precisely three days old, 
having beeii born, — in Henley-street it is thought — on the 
23rd of the said month, remains a vexed and insoluble ques- 
tion. John Shakspere, it is moreover indisputable, married 
Mary Arden, and here we begin to ascend to quite respect- 
able, almost dignified ancestry : — which Mary Arden was the 
daughter of Robert Arden, of "Wellingcote, who was the son 
of a groom of the chamber to Henry the 7th — which groom 
of the chamber was nephew of Sir John Arden, groom of the 
body to the same monarch ; l so that by his mother's side,' 
writes Mr. De Quincy, in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, — 
'Shakspere was an authentic gentleman' — a circumstance 
which, it should seem, redounds greatly to the honour of the 
author of Hamlet. Plebeian and irreverent critics have, 
however, not only presumed contemptuously to ignore this 
pedigree, but to assert that the mother of Shakspere could 
not read — a manifest slander, the very name, Mary Arden, 
being, as Mr. Charles Knight remarks, in the graceful volume 
which he calls a Biography of Shakspere, redolent of poetry 
— and the supposition, consequently, that its possessor was 
unable to read, becomes a transparent, self-evident absurdity. 
John Shakspere is a less manageable individuality than his 
wife. Ancient gossips of Stratford, questioned not very long 



SHAKSPERE. 31 

after William Shakspere's death, reported that the father of 
the poet had been engaged in the business of a butcher, of a 
wool-dealer, and of a glover. They, however, it seems, did 
not know what they were talking about, — the butcher-im- 
putation especially has been savagely spurned at, and, so to 
speak, kicked out of the controversy, and with it poor Dr. 
Farmer, whose inference from the magnificent passage in 
Hamlet, — 

" Our indiscretions sometimes serve us well 
When our deep plots do fail ; and this should teach us 
There's a divinity that shapes our ends, 
Hough-hew them how we will," — 

that the poet, when writing it must have been thinking of 
the time when he used to shape his father's skewers, brought, 
from its countenance of the butcher tradition, a storni of 
abusive ridicule about the learned commentator's ears, which 
the sublime silliness of the criticism of itself would never 
have excited. 

That John Shakspere dealt in wool and gloves was for a 
long time reluctantly acquiesced in, but it having been ascer- 
tained that he became possessed of a small quantity of land 
in right of his wife, the newer and more acceptable belief is, 
that John Shakspere was in fact what we should now call " a 
gentleman farmer," cultivating his own land, — clipping, and 
of course selling his own wool, — and, it may be, disposing of a 
sheep's carcase— wholesale — now and then. At any rate it is cer- 
tain that in the year 1568 — his son being then in his fourteenth 
year — John Shakspere must have been in tolerably pros- 
perous circumstances, as he was then elected chief bailiff of 
Stratford. Unfortunately, the municipal archives from 
which this gratifying fact has been extracted, furnish others 
of a less agreeable character. One of the rolls is subscribed 



32 EXTKAORDINARY MEN. 

by seventeen persons, ten aldermen and seven burgesses, 
seven of whom only were able to write their names,-— the 
rest, amongst whom is John Shakspere. having affixed their 
marks to the document ! This at the first blush would appear 
decisive as to the worthy bailiff's skill in calligraphy — but it 
is not so, — very far from it, indeed, as the mark, which has 
some resemblance to a pair of compasses, might have been 
a symbolic sign, intended to give additional weight and 
emphasis to his signature ! It is besides urged, that the 
notion of John Shakspere being unable to write, and Mary 
Shakspere to read, must be discarded, inasmuch as the 
author of the article " Shakspere," in the Penny Cyclopaedia, 
emphatically remarks, — "A great deal of what would else ap- 
pear miraculous " in the poet's writings, excite a " reasonable 
admiration" only when one finds that the author was " a well- 
nurtured child of gentle blood." The meaning of which I pre- 
sume to be that, admitting Shakspere's father and mother 
possessed themselves, and gave their son a decent education, 
and that moreover he, the son, was descended on the mater- 
nal side from the grooms of the body and bed-chamber 
previously mentioned, the production of the Macbeth, Ham- 
let, Lear, cease to appear miraculous, and excite a reasonable 
admiration only. Other incidents in connexion with John 
Shakspere gleam out of the musty legal records of the town. 
He had, — it is but faintly questioned, — become embarrassed 
in his affairs, and in 1586, a process of debt against John 
Shakspere was returned by the sheriff, endorsed " Nulla 
Bond," that is, he had been able to find nothing whereon to 
levy execution. But this John Shakspere, it is roundly 
affirmed, must have been a shoemaker of that name residing 
at Stratford, who it appears had previously received relief as 
a pauper, — a fact of very doubtful significance, — for men do 



SHAKSPERE. 33 

not usually issue costly processes of debt against confessed 
paupers. The said records further show that John Shakspere, 
at about the same time, had incurred the penalties set forth in 
the act against Popish recusants by not attending church, at 
least once each month. It cannot be denied, that in this instance 
the real John Shakspere is meant ; but the plain inference 
suggested by the record is combated by the entirely unsup- 
ported assumption, that the contumacious absence from church 
was owing to John Shakspere and his wife being further 
advanced than the rulers of the land in the way of spiritual 
reformation, with a leaning towards Puritanism, — an inclina- 
tion which, at all events, they utterly failed in impressing 
upon their son. It may appear presumptuous to offer an 
opinion adverse to the dicta of such masters in critical bio- 
graphy, still it may be permissible very modestly to avow a 
belief, that the old Shaksperian traditions are in the main 
trustworthy : — That John and Mary Shakspere were honest, 
worthy folk, though deficient in elementary education, — that 
the husband bravely fought the battle of life, at one time 
with success, latterly with ill-fortune, — till assisted by his son, 
— in the various occupations of butcher, wool-dealer, glover, 
and perhaps as cultivator in a small way, for unlucky traders 
are prone to essay many vocations. That John and Mary 
Shakspere were Catholic recusants it is folly to deny; as 
much so, as to dispute that the poet himself, though certainly 
not a Roman Catholic, in a dogmatic or intellectual sense, — 
as Pascal was for instance, — was strongly imbued with the 
purer, nobler influences of that form of Christianity, in proof 
of which, it is only necessary to cite the names of Friar 
Lawrence and saintly Isabel. It may also be safely affirmed, 
that Mary Shakspere had no more notion that her son was, 
through her, " an authentic gentleman," in the groom of the 
bed-chamber meaning of the term, than that he was heir to 



34 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

the crown of England. Really, but for positive evidence to 
the contrary, one would hardly suppose it possible that sane 
men could imagine that even a direct lineal descent from the 
Plantagenets could add one ray to the glory of being the 
mother of Shakspere. 

The baptismal register already quoted, records the only im- 
portant and reliable fact in the boy-history of the poet that 
meets us for several years. That he was sent to the free 
grammar-school of Stratford is generally assumed, and with 
some likelihood of truth, though not a particle of evidence 
can be adduced in proof thereof. The school was governed 
at the time by Thomas Hunt and Thomas Jenkins, and a 
remark by one of the before quoted biographers will meet with 
unhesitating concurrency, — that the said Thomas Hunt and 
Thomas Jenkins, " did not at any rate spoil his (Shakspere's) 
marvellous intellect." An unquestionable verity, no doubt, 
and at the same time, aboutjas awkward a compliment to 
the managers of a free grammar-school as one can conceive. 
The grand visit of Queen Elizabeth to Kenilworth Castle 
occurred when Shakspere was in his eleventh year, and there 
can be little doubt that he, like other denizens of Stratford, 
was present, as far as the commonalty might be present, at 
the regal festivities ; but surely Mr. Charles Knight's intima- 
tion that the dolphin-devices exhibited on that occasion, 
might have suggested the lines in the Midsummer Night's 
Dream, in which Oberon reminds Puck of when they heard — 

" A mermaid on a dolphin's back, 
Utter such dulcet and melodious breath 
That the rude sea grew civil at her song, 
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres 
To hear the sea-maid's music " — 

though not coarsely offensive, like Dr. Farmer's skewer 



SHAKSPEBE. 35 

commentary, is scarcely less far-fetched and puerile. The 
annual fair at Stratford, — the numerous travellers constantly 
journeying north and southward through the town, must, it 
is further argued, have supplied the future dramatist with 
studies of character of which he subsequently availed him- 
self; and thus his marvellous plays are supposed to be in 
some measure accounted for; — the secret of his genius, 
partially, at least, revealed, — an assumption reinforced by the 
authority of Dr. Johnson, who sententiously observes, that 
Shakspere, like other mortals, could only report of what he 
had learned. There is only a very slight degree of truth in 
this sounding dictum. Shakspere in his highest attributes 
was not a copyist of life, but a creator of new modes and 
forms of being. Nobody ever saw or heard a Lady Macbeth, 
a Lear, a Hamlet, a Beatrice, Mercutio, Falstaff, in the 
actual world. They are incarnations of the creative poet's 
own life and faculties, — his imagination, wit, energy, elo- 
quence, tenderness, passion, moulded by wondrous dramatic 
art into exquisitely appropriate and natural expression, 
whether it be a hero or a child, — a woman or a warrior, — : a 
demon or a saint that speaks and acts. All therefore that 
Shakspere could acquire by observation of mankind was, 
the power of manifesting himself intelligibly to his human 
audience. But this is too tritely obvious to require further 
illustration. Even in the kindred but inferior arts of sculp- 
ture and painting, wherein the artist's thought can only be 
revealed through mechanical media requiring years of labour 
and patience to master, he only is a creative genius whose 
originals are conceived and matured in his own brain ; and 
it will, nevertheless, not be denied that the Venus de 
Medicis, the Moses, the Saint Paul, are exquisitely natural ! 
But though it be vain and ridiculous to grope amidst the 



36 EXTEAOEDINARY MEN. 

scenes of Shakspere's youth or manhood, for the originals 
or suggestions even of his clowns, fools, shepherds ; his 
Autolycus, Perdita, William, much less his higher creations, 
it is not the less certain that the influences to which his early 
life was exposed — the beautiful rurality encompassing Strat- 
ford, with its solitary woods, and grassy lanes, and silvered 
streams — the near and picturesque cities of Warwick and 
Coventry — the feudal grandeur of Kenilworth — the monastic 
ruins of Evesham — the primitive and thoroughly English 
manners of the people amongst whom his youth was passed, 
must have vividly coloured and impressed the general tone 
and character of his mind. His hearty sympathy with 
country life and country sports is abundantly testified in his 
writings; and if he did not, and it is now angrily asserted 
that he did not, poach Sir Thomas Lucy's deer, it was cer- 
tainly from no want of knowledge of how a hart of grease 
might be successfully dealt with. Nothing irritates Shak- 
spere's recent biographers so much as to intimate the faintest 
credence of the poet having despoiled the lord of Charlecote 
of his venison. It has been ascertained that Sir Thomas 
Lucy had no enclosed park, — and hence, by a rather violent 
inference, that he could have had no deer, — which, if ad- 
mitted, unquestionably demolishes the deer-poaching tradition, 
root and branch. As to the Reverend R. Davis, who, living 
about a century after the poet's death, dared to reproduce 
the vile traditionary scandal, according to which, young 
Shakspere " was very much given to all unluckiness in 
•stealing venison and rabbits, particularly from Sir Thomas 
Lucy, who had him oft whipt and sometimes imprisoned, and 
at last made him fly his native county to his great advance- 
ment f he, the Reverend Davis, is unanimously devoted to 
the infernal gods without benefit of clergy, as a reckless 



SHAKSPEKE. 37 

slanderer, whose depravity of mind and stupidly-malignant 
hatred of intellectual greatness, puts him out of the pale of 
civilized society! The whippings and imprisonments are 
no doubt apocryphal, false, but the deer-poaching tradition is 
not so easily criticised or explained away, and therein, — no 
moral offence being, as everybody knows, imputable in the 
matter, — as well as with respect to other incidents in the 
youthful life of Shakspere, I hold that it is wiser and safer to 
be guided by the old lamps than by the new ones. 

In November, 1582, we again alight from aerial discursions 
upon tangible and solid ground, in the plainly recorded event 
of a day, the 26th of the aforesaid month, which, moreover, 
leads us back with equal certitude to the earlier autumn of 
the year, about the close of August, at which beguiling season 
of the year, when the summer beauty of the earth reveals the 
first rude touches of decay, and the sighs of the frail and 
tremulous leaves are sadly eloquent of the fleeting mutability 
of life and joy and beauty, William Shakspere was strolling 
with Anne Hathaway through the grassy lanes and fields 
about Shottery, a pleasant village distant only about a mile 
from Stratford. " Sweet Anne," as might easily be read in 
the gleaming depths of her delighted eyes by the bright light 
of the harvest moon, wondering, as she drank in the honey 
of his music vows, if it could indeed be her — her very self, 
to whom they were addressed. Anne Hathaway was some 
years older than her poet-lover, but looking, one might be 
safely sworn, as country maidens often do, much younger than 
her age, and fresh, charming, fragrant withal as the streams 
and woods and flowers amidst which young Shakspere 
found and wooed her. As before stated, the 26th of No- 
vember, 1582, supplies an indisputable fact in Shakspere's 
youthful histoiy. There was considerable excitement on that 



EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 







clay in the farmstead at Shottery, the home of Anne Hath- 
away and her parents, soon however calmed down by the 
execution of a marriage bond between "William Shakspere and 
the daughter of the house, to which the two farmer-bondsmen, 
by the way, being unable to write, affixed their marks. After 
once asking in church only the contracted couple were united 
in the bonds of holy matrimony, and before the end of the 
following May, much too soon, Anne presented her husband 
with a daughter — Susannah Shakspere. Not long afterwards 



SHAKSPERE. 39 

the youthful father, he had just entered his 20th year, left 
Stratford for London. It was two years subsequently to 
this, in 1585, that Hamet and Judith, twins, Shakspere's 
only other children, were born. Mr. De Quincy, it may not 
be amiss to notice, indulges in speculations with regard to 
Shakspere's marriage, which one is glad to find rest upon no 
other evidence than the forced and arbitrary application of 
some passages in the poet's writings. Mr. De Quincy would 
have us believe that Shakspere was inveigled into an unfor- 
tunate liaison by an artful girl — woman rather; and albeit 
that his sense of honour compelled him to marry the beguil- 
ing temptress, she neither possessed his affection nor esteem. 
Happily, I repeat, there is not the slightest proof of this, and 
it would require very positive evidence to set aside the pre- 
cisely opposite presumption, were there no other, raised by 
the remarkable bequest in the poet's will to his wife, other- 
wise amply provided for by her legal thirds, of the brown bed. 
Without considering the matter too curiously, we may hold 
this beyond all reasonable question, the brown bed was that 
in which Shakspere saw his first-born child smiling in its 
mother-nurse's arms. A man regarding his wife with cold 
indifference, personal aversion, resentful disgust, as Mr. De 
Quincy intimates, might perhaps bequeath her a carriage, 
plate, jewellery, an estate even, but the brown bed never ! 

That Shakspere, on his arrival in London, held horses for 
a time at the doors of the theatre, according to ancient 
rumour, is fiercely denied by writers who are determined to 
discard every anecdote which would seem to connect the 
poet with meanness, or servility of personal condition, and 
the reason given in this instance for their disbelief — that till 
Shakspere had himself created a drama which attracted 
men of fortune and education to the theatre, such places were 



40 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

frequented only by the rabble of society, who, in those days 
at least, did not ride horses, appears incontrovertible. For- 
tunately it is beyond cavil or. dispute that Shakspere rapidly 
attained to favour, eminence, and fortune at the capital and 
court of England, and was enabled to retire at a comparatively 
early age to his beloved Stratford, and there close his earthly 
life in peace, prosperity, and honour, after enriching mankind, 
and especially the Anglo-Saxon nations, with an inheritance 
of unspeakable magnificence and value — with thoughts that 
are the breath-utterances which are the household words of 
millions upon millions of Englishmen — of those alike which 
inhabit the vast western and southern continents, and the 
dwellers in the old northern island home of the teeminsr 

o 

race. 

" Possessed of the Bible and Shakspere," remarked the Earl 
of Carlisle a short time since in addressing the members of 
a mechanics' institution, "a man may be said to be above 
the world f — an unchallengeable verity as applied to man's 
spiritual intellectuality, of which the essential needs para- 
mountry require, apart from the sacred writings, of which this 
is not the place to speak, but the volume of the great Poet of 
Humanity, wherein all emotions, desires, passions — love, hate, 
terror, remorse, ambition, — whatever thrills the pulse, fires 
the blood, or stirs the unfathomable depths of the wondrous 
human soul, — except contempt for the humble and the un- 
happy — except scorn of the lowly and the helpless — find their 
simplest, sublimest, gentlest, most terrific, truest, happiest, 
and infinitely varied expression, traced in lines of living, 
imperishable light. 




OLIVER CROMWELL. 



rpHE literary partisans of the Restoration appear to have 
-*- felt no scruple in gratifying their patrons with any 
number of boldly-inventive fables relative to the early life of 
this able and distinguished, if fanatical and usurping, soldier 
and statesman. According to them, he whose stern menace 
arrested the persecution of the Yaudois by the princes of 
Piedmont, was hand-in-glove with the devil from his childhood ; 
the fiery and sagacious commander who disconcerted the 
tactics, and overthrew the armies of every royalist general — 
Prince Rupert inclusive — that had the misfortune to encounter 
him ; the politician who penned or dictated the letters, 
speeches and dispatches recently collated by Mr. Carlyle, was 



42 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

a bom dullard, as well as villain and buffoon, whose history, 
from the cradle to the grave, was unredeemed by the faintest 
indication of genius, intellect, or humanity ! The coarse 
daubing of those mercenary limners, exposed of late years to 
the keen atmosphere of a searching criticism, has, however, 
fallen off in flakes, and if the image of the boy-Cromwell in 
the national mind is still somewhat smirched and stained by 
the impressions left by the crumbling lamp-black with which 
it was so lavishly encrusted, its true lineaments and character 
can now be discerned with sufficient accuracy to satisfy us 
that it is at all events no vulgar, merely brutal spirit, that 
gleams forth from beneath the massive forehead — that speaks 
more clearly than in words, by the firmly-closed, flexible 
lips ; and we are enabled at once to, instinctively as it were, 
recognise one of those faces upon which a great life early 
dawns and glasses itself. 

The birth and lineage of Oliver Cromwell have taxed the 
ingenuity of both eulogists and detractors. According to the 
latter gentlemen he was simply a brewer, and descended from 
a blacksmith. Others, and amongst them, the author of 
Paradise Lost, run riot in a contrary direction. " Cromwell," 
writes Milton, " was of noble and illustrious family. The name 
was formerly famous in the state when well governed by kings, 
and more famous for orthodox religion, then first restored or 
established amongst us." This passage refers, of course, to 
Thomas Cromwell, son of "Walter Cromwell, a" blacksmith of 
Putney, the successor of Wolsey in ministerial power, enriched 
and created Earl of Essex, by Henry the Eighth, for his zeal 
in the destruction of monasteries, and finally beheaded by that 
amiable monarch. A sister of this Earl of Essex, handsomely 
dowered with church-lands, married one Morgan Williams, of 
Glamorganshire, who afterwards assumed the name of Crom- 



CROMWELL. 43 

well, and settled at Hitchinbrook, near Huntingdon. Robert 
Cromwell, the second son of Sir Henry Cromwell, the grandson 
of Morgan Williams, and the sister of the decapitated Earl of 
Essex, married Elizabeth Steward, sister of Sir Thomas Stew- 
ard, and remotely allied, it is said, to the Scottish royal family. 
The issue of this marriage was five daughters, and a son, 
Oliver Cronrwell, the future Protector, who was born at 
Huntingdon on the 25th of April, 1599. Robert Crom- 
well, the father, possessed an income of about three hundred, 
a-year, and his wife had a jointure of sixty pounds a-year. 
There is a picture of this excellent woman still preserved at 
Hitchinbrook, which represents her to be a person somewhat 
above the middle height, and having large, mild, pensive eyes, 
a finely chiseled mouth, and clear lustrous forehead, mantled 
with bright hair ; the whole countenance lit up and harmon- 
ised by the sweetest expression imaginable. Oliver loved and 
honoured this admirable mother, and was in return tenderly 
beloved by her j and this fact alone might sufficiently refute 
much of the ribald calumny heaped upon his youth. 

Whatever may be thought of the noble and illustrious 
descent claimed for Oliver Cromwell on the father's side, 
there can be no doubt that the combined energy of the 
three races, — English, Scotch, and Welsh, — was strikingly 
manifested in both his physical and mental organization. A 
boisterous, pugnacious child and boy he is said to have been, 
and no doubt was ; delighting in rough sports, coarse, prac- 
tical jests, and daring adventures, — orchard-breaking among 
the rest, for which rather frequent offence, " satisfaction" was 
relentlessly " taken out of his hide," by his father. In one of 
his scamperings about the country, he chanced to tumble 
into a river, but was happily fished out by the Rev. Mr. 
Johnson, curate of Connington, much to that loyal person's 

d2 



44 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

after regret, if lie was sincere in his reply to Colonel Crom- 
well, who when passing through Huntingdon at the head of 
his Ironsides, recognised the reverend gentleman, and spoke 
of the service he had rendered him approaching to forty years 
previously. " I remember the circumstance well," replied the 
zealous royalist ; " arid I wish I had let you drown, rather 
than see you here in arms against your king;" whereupon 
the rebel- colonel smiled good-naturedly, and went on his 
way. 

The daring frolicksome humour of the boy supplied the 
germ of a story related upon " high and credible authority," 
to have taken place during his infancy. His grandfather, Sir 
Henry Cromwell, had sent for the child; and to the amaze- 
ment and consternation of everybody who witnessed it, when 
near the house at Hitchinbrook, a monkey leapt upon the 
cradle, seized Oliver, and scampered with him over the leads 
and roof of the mansion. The servants ran out with beds 
and blankets to catch the child if it should fall, or be thrown 
down, — a needless precaution, had they known all. It was 
no monkey that was dandling and chattering with little 
Noll, but the fiend, in the likeness of one, who had hit upon 
this extraordinary expedient for giving Master Oliver his 
first lesson in the devilish arts of treason and king-killing, 
which accomplished, the semblant monkey safely redeposited 
the child in its cradle. The foundation of this anecdote was, 
that Oliver, when about seven years of age, chased a monkey 
over the roof of his grandfather's house, to the great terror of 
the spectators, who momently expected him to fall headlong 
and break his neck. He was two years older when the same 
fearless temperament displayed itself, in conjunction with a 
higher, nobler quality. One of his mischievous school-boy 
I ranks, possibly robbing an orchard of a hatful of apples. 



CROMWELL. 45 

brought on him the displeasure of his mother, who, her hus- 
band being from home, inflicted a severe caning upon the 
delinquent, and sent him to bed early in the evening. Oliver 
was still fiercely sobbing with rage and pain, when a servant 
entering the bed-room upon some errand, happened to say 
that Mrs. Cromwell had gone out on a visit to a sick friend, 
and intended returning alone by a road across fields, a dis- 
tance of two or three miles. The moment the servant was 
gone and the door closed, the boy sprang out of bed, hastily 
dressed himself, got down in some way from a window into 
the back-yard unobserved, or the domestics would have 
stopped him, possessed himself of a light spade, and sped off 
in the direction Mrs. Cromwell was expected. He had 
traversed two-thirds of the distance, when he met his 
mother. " There — there is a savage bull," said the still sob- 
bing and excited boy, in reply to Mrs. Cromwell's exclamation 
of surprise, "in the field I have just passed, placed there I 
knew to day, and I — I thought he might run at your red 
cardinal, and so I slipped out and came." The mother kissed 
her son, and proudly escorted by the dreadless boy, passed 
the fierce brute, who intently regarded them, in safety. 

Numberless instances are related, all clearly showing that 
young Oliver was a born regicide, thoroughly resolved to one 
day behead the future King Charles, albeit that prince, his 
elder brother being yet alive, was not even heir-apparent to 
the crown, and seat himself upon the vacated throne. Lord 
Clarendon himself vouches for the supernatural agency which 
prompted the boy's soaring ambition, all the circumstances 
connected with which were, his lordship states, the subject of 
common talk long before the commencement of the troubles, 
which might otherwise, perhaps, have suggested the impious 
prophecies. Young Cromwell was, it seems, lying awake in 



46 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

bed, when the curtains were slowly drawn aside, and a 
gigantic figure, with the aspect of a woman, looked in upon 
the boy, and told him : " he would be the greatest man in 
England." Oliver immediately informed Mr. ."Robert Crom- 
well of the high destiny awaiting his son, and was " soundly 
flogged " for his dutiful pains ; and upon communicating the 
circumstance to his maternal uncle, Sir T. Steward, that 
gentleman solemnly admonished his nephew that it was 
traitorous to entertain such thoughts. It was this satanic 
visitation, further states my Lord Clarendon, which hindered 
Cromwell from accepting the crown when it was pressed upon 
his acceptance by the council of officers : " I should be the 
greatest man in England," muttered the Protector, as he 
reluctantly put aside the glittering bauble, " but he did not 
say I should be king," — a clear admission, by the way, in the 
use of the masculine pronoun, that Cromwell knew perfectly 
well who the prophetic shape was, though appearing in the 
guise of a woman; and moreover proof of a considerable 
forbearance on the Protector's part in refusing to convict his 
ancient friend, as he might easily have done, of want of fore- 
sight. This was the more generous, as Oliver, when a pupil 
of Dr. Beard's, at the Huntingdon free-school, manifested a 
decided predilection for the crown, which, according to Lord 
Clarendon, he, in deference to infernal prophecy, ultimately 
refused. As is frequently the case in large scholastic establish- 
ments, a kind of dramatic entertainment was enacted by the 
principal pupils of the Huntingdon free-school, called " The 
Contest of the Five Senses for the Croivn of Superiority." 
Cromwell enacted the part of Tactus, or Feeling, and in order 
to have an opportunity of crowning himself, extemporised, 
we are told, some "mighty majestical words," not to be 
found in his part, — an accusation, it may be remarked, in 



CKOMWELL. 47 

passing, somewhat at variance with the common one of dul- 
ness and stupidity. The " mighty majestical words " were, 
however, not Oliver's, but those of the writer of the piece, 
and essential to its action : 

Enter Tactus (sohis). 

Tactus. Roses and bays pack hence ; this crown and robes 
My brows and body circles and invests. 
How gallantly it fits me. Sure the slave 
Measured my head that wrought this coronet. 
My blood's ennobled, and I am transformed 
Unto the sacred nature of a king. 

These lines, delivered with brave emphasis, were much 
applauded by the audience, and shrewdly remembered after- 
wards, as another presumptive proof, if any were wanting, 
of Oliver's early compact with the devil, and the treason they 
had hatched together. 

The story of Oliver having given Prince Charles, when 
Duke of York, a bloody nose, has a likelihood of truth. Sir 
Henry Cromwell was a devoted loyalist, whom James the 
First sometimes visited. Upon one of these occasions, Sir 
Henry is said to have sent for his little grandson to play 
■with the royal children. Oliver and Prince Charles quar- 
relled over their sports, and of course Prince Charles, who 
was a weakly boy, had the worst of it in the encounter which 
followed. 

On the 23rd of April, 1616, two days only before his seven- 
teenth birth-day, Oliver Cromwell entered Sussex College, 
Cambridge, where, however, he was not destined to remain 
long, his mother having recalled him to Huntingdon, at his 
father's death, in the following year. He passed with' super- 
ficial observers at the University, for a mere blustering 
roysterer, much more fitted to attain celebrity at quarter- 



■48 



EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 




staff, cudgel playing, foot-ball, et cetera, than by higher aims 
and pursuits. Milton thus admits and excuses his want 
of bookish application: — "It did not become that hand 
to wax soft in literary ease which was to be inured to the use 
of arms, and hardened with asperity ; that right arm to be 
softly wrapped up amongst the nocturnal birds of Athens, 
by which thunderbolts were soon afterwards to be hurled 
among the eagles which emulate the sun." Not long after 
his father's death, Oliver went to London, and ate his terms 
in Lincoln's Inn. His implacable revilers iiisist that during 
his stay there and intermediate visit to Huntingdon, he was 
remarkable only for excesses of every kind — drinking, 
gaming, " kissing every girl he met," knocking in the barrel- 



CROMWELL. 4:9 

heads of defenceless ale-wives, and never paying for the good 
liquor scandalously wasted or given away : and yet, so trans- 
parently inconsistent with itself is unreasoning prejudice, that 
these same scribes declare, that the Oliver Cromwell whom 
they thus described was from early boyhood regarded by 
everybody in Huntingdon and its neighbourhood, as one 
born to achieve greatness, to soar high above his fellows, 
should chance or fate afford him the slightest opportunity of 
doing so ! — An anticipation echoed thereafter by his kinsman, 
John Hampden, in his frequently-quoted reply to Digby : — 
" That sloven as you esteem him, is Mr. Oliver Cromwell, the 
member for Huntingdon, and if we should ever, which God 
forbid, come to a rupture with the king, will be the greatest 
man in England." It is easy to trace through all the tissue 
of folly and misrepresentation by which the boy-life of a great, 
though far from perfect man, has been obscured and distorted, 
the germ and growth of those remarkable qualities, resolute 
will, indomitable energy, clear, masculine intellect, lofty 
patriotism, disdain of conventionalism, which in after years 
raised their possessor to supreme- power ; and if the devotional 
fervour, first kindled in the youthful Oliver's mind by the 
Bible-teachings of his mother, subsequently flamed into 
fanaticism — the evil is in a great degree attributable to the 
persecuting intolerance of the monarchs under whose sway 
he grew to manhood, — for hardly a day could have passed 
without tidings reaching him of some cruel or despotic act — 
some fresh outrage upon sufferers for conscience sake, — some 
new encroachment upon the ancient vital liberties of the 
country. He had not long passed his twenty-first birth-day 
when he married (August 22d, 1620) Elizabeth, the daughter 
of Sir John Bourchier, a relative of Hampden's, thenceforth 
putting resolutely aside all boyish follies, he, to use Mil- 



50 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

ton's expression, "nomished his soul in silence," against the 
time, which he never doubted must arrive when a brave 
determined stand would be made against the galling and 
oppressive yoke by which it was sought to bend the spirit of 
the English and Scottish peoples into submission to arbitrary 
rule in both civil and religious government. 





MOLIERE. 



HHHE real name of this eminent and facile dramatist, 
-*- eulogised by Boileau, as — 

" Ce rare et fameux esprit, dont la fertile veine, 
Ignore en ecrivant, le travail et la peine." 

was Jean Baptiste Poquelin — that of Moliere having been 
assumed by him when he made choice of the stage as a pro- 
fession. He was born on the 15th of January, 1622, and 
was consequently the contemporary of Corneille and Racine. 
M. de Voltaire says, he accomplished for comedy what those 
poets did for tragedy; a criticism far from conrplinientary, 
by-the-way, to the author of Tartuffe and Le Bourgeois 
Gentilhomme, how highly soever we may admire the stately, 



52 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

b>rilliant, and tender verses of those great writers in the Cid 
Phedre, Britannicus, and other of their dramatic poems, — 
though certainly not so absurd a judgment as the prince of 
mockers, and well-nigh feeblest of dramatists, pronounced, 
when he expressed surprise that a nation which possessed so 
magnificent a tragedy as Mr. Addison's Cato, could tolerate 
the Macbeth and Lear of Shakspere. Moliere, to give him 
the name by which he is world-known, was of very humble 
birth, albeit he was not, as formerly supposed, a stray waif of 
one of the Dames de la Halle, and exposed therein to the 
chance discovery and compassion of the passers by. His 
parents were upholsterers, and he was born, it has been pretty 
well ascertained, in the Rue St. Honore, Paris, at which time 
his father held the post of valet-upholsterer to the King of 
France ; that is, he had to attend his majesty on his journeys, 
or whenever else his services were required, to arrange the 
draperies, curtains, &c, of the king's apartments ; and some- 
times, it appears, to make the royal bed. Young Moliere was 
destined, in the fulness of time, to succeed his father as king's 
valet-upholsterer (valet-tapissier), and with that view care- 
fully instructed in the business, and little else ; for at the age 
of fourteen he could barely read, write, and cast simple 
accounts ; and his knowledge of the world he was thereafter 
so graphically to portray was chiefly limited to the occupants 
or visitors of his father's workshop, and the priests and wor- 
shippers at the church to which his mother, a pious woman, 
n6e Marie Cresse, used to convey him every Sunday morning 
to hear mass, and every Sunday evening to sing vespers. His 
keen faculty of observation was early manifested, as well as 
a considerable power of mimicry, indulgence wherein — more 
especially when at the expense of the clergy, frequently cost 
him dear. " Concois-tu, Lisette," said the future painter of 



MOLIEHE. 



53 






( 1 


III 






■!i 


V 




!j'| 





■ ■ i 




Tartuffe, as soon as he had dried his eyes, and cleared his 
voice, addressing a serving-girl employed in the workshop, 
" Congois tu, Lisette, pourquoi Ton s'enrage si fiirieusement 
quand on me voit faire le Pretre ?" " Asseverement T replied 
Lisette ; " tu le fais trop bien." The business to which he 
was apparently doomed was much disliked by the boy, 
and it was rendered unendurable by his grandfather taking 
him to see the theatrical performances at the Hotel Bour- 
gogne, at the time Belle-Rose, Gros-Gillaume and Tnrlnpin, 
all of course stage names, were performing there. It was no 
longer possible after one or two visits to the theatre, to induce 
Jean Baptiste, either by threat or persuasion, cuffs or kind- 



54 EXTRAOEDINARY MEN. 

ness, to attend to his work ; and his grandfather, swayed by 
the boy's pleadings and M. Pocquelin's angry remonstrances, 
got him admitted as out-scholar to the College of Clermont, 
afterwards that of Louis le Grand, then under the direction 
of the Jesuits, with the avowed hope of making his promising 
grandson a great man. Moliere remained five years at this 
college, and ever afterwards spoke in high terms of his spiritual 
preceptors, though he certainly did not gain much in religious 
orthodoxy by their teachings. This, however, was not their 
fault; his marked superiority over other boys of his age 
having procured him not only the friendship and patronage 
of the Prince of Conti, brother of the great Conde, as he is 
called, and other influential personages, but early introduced 
him to the damaging society of Gassendi, a somewhat cele- 
brated person, who affected the office of moderator between 
the ancient and modern physical theories in dispute between 
the believers in Aristotle and the disciples of Galileo and 
Descartes, — sometimes siding with the one party and some- 
times with the other. The baleful, varnished cynicism by 
which the great majority of the upper ranks of French 
society were more or less infected was openly avowed and 
defended by Gassendi's coterie, and he himself was zealous to 
indoctrinate young Moliere amongst others, with the revived 
and fashionable philosophy of Epicurus. One of Moliere's 
fellow pupils was Brenier the traveller, who used to charm- 
ingly divert Mademoiselle De l'Enclos with his illustrative 
proofs that all man and womankind, high or low, of what- 
ever race, clime, or religion, were all " Swiss," that is pur- 
chaseable, like himself, like Mademoiselle, like Cardinal 
Richelieu, like everybody, in fact, without exception. The* 
children of Loyola must not therefore be blamed for Moliere's 
scepticism, supposing the imputation to be fairly applied^ 



MOLIEKE. 55 

which is rendered somewhat doubtful by the fact that his 
last moments were, at his own request, attended and consoled 
by two Sisters of Charity, whom he had been in the habit of 
receiving into his house for many years on their annual visits 
to Paris during Lent to collect alms. In 1640, Moliere was 
obliged, in consequence of his father's illness, to attend Louis 
the XIII. as valet-upholsterer to Narbonne; and on his return 
he witnessed the execution of Cinq-Mars and his unfortunate 
friend De Thou ; a spectacle which is said to have done much 
to convince him that the philosophy which teaches that man's 
highest good is to eat, drink, and sleep, as comfortably as may 
be without regard to others' welfare, whilst it is yet possible 
to do so, is the only sound and sensible one. 

The young man's vocation in life was still undecided ; his 
father pronounced for upholstering, some of his friends for 
the law, which he studied for a short time at Orleans, but 
the strong inclination for the stage which had possessed and 
dominated him since he first visited the Hotel Bourgogne 
with his maternal uncle, finally prevailed, and he perma- 
nently associated himself with a company of comedians, 
comprising the two brothers Bejart, their sister Madeline, 
and Dupare, otherwise Gros-Rene, and not long afterwards 
commenced his greatly successful career as a dramatist. The 
unhappy influences by which Moliere's youth was encom- 
passed projected a baleful shadow as we now perceive over 
his whole after life, which, in all but the display of his 
manners-painting power, was a vain, illusory, and abortive 
one. The lynx-eyed observer of the follies of others, the 
author of UEcole des Maris, espoused, at the age of forty, a 
pretty actress of sixteen, who took upon herself to illustrate 
and defend the Epicurean philosophy of self-indulgence, in a 
very bold and candid manner, coolly replying when taxed by 



56 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

her half-distracted and indignant husband with her manifest 
partiality for M. Lauzan, that he was mistaken, as it was 
M. Guille she preferred. The last striking commentary upon 
the teachings to which his boyhood had been exposed, and 
which he had at last learned to execrate, was supplied during 
his last hours, which would have been untended, uncheered 
by human sympathy, but for the ministering presence of two 
humble Sisters of Mercy, whose mission was dictated by the 
spirit of self-sacrifice. 

It may be permitted, in concluding this brief notice of the 
early years of the great French dramatist, to remark that his 
genius was pre-eminently a reflective, not a creative one. He 
could place a Precieuse Ridicule of the Hotel Rambouillet, or 
a Tartuffe admirably en scene, and the life-like resemblance 
would be instantly acknowledged. Even his exaggerations 
of character, as in the Malade Imaginaire, are so humorously 
effective, so artistically contrived, that one does not for a 
time perceive that it is a caricature, not a genuine portrait, 
which challenges applause and admiration. To do this 
unquestionably requires dramatic talent of a high order; but 
he who possesses it, in even so eminent a degree as did 
Moliere, can no more be compared with him who created 
Rosalind, Beatrice, and Mercutio, than Sir T. Lawrence to 
Haffaelle, or the accurate carver of Mr. Jones' head in wood 
or stone, to him who modelled the head of the Apollo. Yet, 
immeasurably inferior, withal, as Moliere's comic portraitures 
are to the creations of Shakspere, it is certain that he has no 
rival in French dramatic writing, nor, as regards the comedy 
of manners, in perhaps that of any other country. 




BLAISE PASCAL. 

T)LAISE PASCAL, the name of one of the most divinely- 
-*-' gifted men that ever trod the earth to enlighten, elevate, 
and guide it ; in whom the love of truth for its own sake was a 
consuming passion, whose too-brief life was a manifestation ot 
the harmoniously-combined powers of reason and faith in 
their highest and purest development, was bom in Auvergne, 
France, on the 19th of June, 1623. He was extremely for- 
tunate in his parentage. His father, M. Etienne Pascal, was 
President of the Court of Aides in that province, and was 
held in great esteem, not only as a citizen and magistrate, 
but as a man of science, and especially a sound mathematician. 
His wife, every way worthy of her husband, died when 
Blaise, the youngest but one of three children, and the only 
boy, was in his fourth year. Already at that tender age, the 
restless inquisitive intellect of the child was awake, and stirred 

E 



58 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

uneasily. He had been removed against his will from the 
death-chamber, and when next seen by his father, he was 
gazing with wet gleaming eyes at the stuffed figure of a bird 
that had belonged to him, which he held in his hand. 
" Father," exclaimed the child, with quiet earnestness, the 
instant M. Pascal entered the room: "what is death?" 
The answer is not given. The blow which had just fallen 
was keenly felt by Etienne Pascal, his union with Antoinette 
Begon having been one of mutual and tenderest affection ; and 
according to the testimony of his daughter, Madame Perier, 
the brief day of Ms married life was unchequered by a pass- 
ing cloud. The death of his wife no doubt confirmed and 
hastened the intention of M. Pascal to retire from private 
life, and devote his time and energies to the education of his 
family, — chiefly that of Blaise, his son, in whom he had not 
failed to discern unmistakeable indications of extraordinary 
mental power, which in the father s opinion required for its 
ultimate sound and vigorous development, to be checked for 
a time, and not stimulated into precocious effort. With this 
prime object in view, M. Etienne Pascal sold his office of 
President of the Court of Aides to his brother, and removed 
in 1631 with his young family to Paris. The first half of 
the seventeenth century was a great epoch in the history of 
the exact sciences, as well as in that of the more speculative 
opinions which agitate and divide mankind. The Reforma- 
tion had shaken other besides Papal superstitions; mere 
authority in science as well as religion, however weighty and 
imposing, found itself scanned in all directions by keen eyes 
undazzled by the halo of revered antiquity, before which men 
had been so long contented to bow down with unquestioning 
submission. Galileo had practically disproved one of Aris- 
totle's axiomatic propositions on the speed of falling bodies; 



PASCAL. 59 

his telescope had confirmed the Copernican theory of the 
motion of the earth and planets, and was enabling Kepler, not 
indeed to legislate for the starry orbs, — as a frequently quoted 
hyperbolical extravagance expresses it, — but to ascertain the 
laws by which they are controlled in their orbits, — not the 
principle, so to speak, of those laws, that was reserved for a 
greater than Kepler, — Sir Isaac Newton. Torricelli, — after 
Galileo, — was questioning experimentally the soundness of 
another Aristotelian dogma, — "that nature abhors a vacuum," 
— which, if it did not solve, was made to silence so many 
troublesome questions and objections, — a venerable fallacy 
which it was reserved for him whose brilliant boyhood we are 
about to sketch, to thoroughly explode, by proving that air 
had weight not long after Torricelli's death in 164G, had left 
the question still in dispute. Altogether, it was a time of 
mental agitative inquiry. The fountains of the great deep 
of prescription and authority were broken up, and innumer- 
able theories, for the most part utterly fantastical and absurd, 
some with a few scintillations of verity, overlaid with a 
dense mass of folly and error, and a few, luminous and 
buoyant with imperishable truth, floated upon the surface of 
the pregnant waters. The study of Geometry, the key to 
the exact sciences, was naturally, at such a time, zealously 
cultivated, and by few more ardently than Etienne Pascal, 
who, emancipated from business, and an enthusiastic mathe- 
matician, gladly associated himself with a number of superior 
men of like bent of mind, — Carcari, Le Pailleur, Roberval, 
Mydorge, Mersenne and others, the nucleus of the Academie 
des Sciences, incorporated by royal charter in 1656, who 
frequently assembled at his house to compare notes, and talk 
over the discoveries, real and fabulous, in the regions of 
science, which the not very long previously invented faculty 

e 2 



60 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

of swift, silent, ubiquitous speech, — the printing press,— was 
disseminating through the world. 

The young Blaise, meanwhile, was undergoing the course 
of education prescribed by his father — namely, the study of 
the Greek and Latin classics, in the original — and polite 
literature generally, ancient and modern, with a view to 
form his taste upon correct and elegant models, and fill his 
mind with images of beauty, tenderness and grace, before 
permitting him to engage in the severer intellectual pursuits, 
for which he evidently pined, as might a half-conscious youth- 
ful giant, condemned to weave chaplets for the victors in an 
assault upon some citadel of mysterious strength, the con- 
fused din and tumult of which he hears afar off, but may not 
mingle in, though feeling instinctively that his true place 
is in the foremost ranks of the combatants — not there, idling 
amidst girls and flowers. Constantly, when his father's 
scientific friends met together, would the boy creep into the 
room, and seating himself as much as possible out of the way 
of observation, listen with rapt attention to their conversa- 
tion, of which he could comprehend only the general purport 
— that they were questioning nature of her most jealously- 
guarded secrets, and endeavouring to eliminate the truth 
from the mass of broken and often seemingly contradictory 
replies they had severally received. The excited state of the 
boy's inquisitive mind constantly revealed itself. "What are 
you doing with that plate, Blaise ?" exclaimed his elder 
sister, upon one occasion. " You surely are not trying to 
break it ?" " No — no," replied the brother, " but notice, 
Gibberte, when I strike the plate with a knife, it rings, 
hark ! — and when I grasp it with my hand thus, the sound 
ceases. "Why is that, I wonder ?" A question or doubt once 
suggested to his mind, there could be no rest or quiet forhim 



PASCAL. 61 

till it was resolved, and from this moment — he was in his 
tenth year — may be dated the process of experimental rea- 
soning, embodied in his Treatise upon Sound, perfect as far as 
it went, which he completed about three years afterwards. 
But the study which he most ardently longed to pursue, was 
that of geometry, and his incessant questioning at last deter- 
mined his father not even to speak on the subject in his 
presence or hearing; nor permit him to be for an instant 
where it was discoursed upon by others. He also took care 
that his son should have access to no books which treated 
even incidentally of the science. " When, Blaise, you are 
sufficiently grounded in the Greek and Latin classics," he 
said, " you shall receive instruction in the exact sciences, but 
not till then." "Tell me, at least," exclaimed his son, 
" what this wonderful geometry is — what it means — proves — 
whither it leads !" 

" It treats," replied M. Pascal, " of the properties of 
figures and the relations between the several dimensions 
that compose them." " Yes," said the boy, " I know, or at 
least I suppose that, but surely geometry means something 

else — something more — some Ah, well!" he added, 

checking himself, "this Greek and Latin once finished, I 
shall begin to learn something." The vehement impulse of 
Blaise Pascal's mind to attach itself only to that which was 
demonstratively true, weakened for a time his admiration of 
eloquence and poetry, and it was only from anxiety to avoid 
giving pain to his father, that he resolutely persevered in the 
prescribed studies — an act of filial submission amply recom- 
pensed in after years, when the ardent zeal of the consum- 
mate mathematician to ascertain the properties and conditions 
of the material, visible world, had been superseded by the 
loftier aim of the spiritual philosopher to penetrate the im- 



62 



EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 



palpable, immaterial secret of the universe — involving the 
Life of God and the immortality of man. No doubt the 
innate force, the subtle energy of his piercing intellect might 
have been apparent as now, in the deathless " Thoughts,'' 
had those studies been neglected ; but the exquisite sim- 
plicity of style in which they are clothed ; — the quiet grace 
and charm shed over them by a fancy chastened and refined 
by early familiarity with the masters of composition, must, 
to some extent, have been wanting, and the Pensees de Pascal, 
been deprived, not of power, it may be, but certainly of some 
part of their attractiveness. 

Blaise Pascal's place of study was a large, unfurnished 
room — save for a table and two chairs, where his father, who 
was a model of accuracy and method, entered only at stated 
times ; and the instant the lad had mastered his tasks and 
there was no fear of interruption, he was deep " in the pro- 
perties of figures," and drawing with a piece of charcoal on 
the floor the lines and circles which should reproduce and 
demonstrate the problem figured in his brain. This went on 
till past his eleventh birth-day, when his father unexpectedly 
entered the room, and caught the eager geometer at his labour 
of love. " What are you doing there, Blaise ?" asked M. 
Pascal, as his son, confused, and blushing, rose hastily from 
his recumbent position. ""What are you doing there, 
Blaise ?" Blaise could not have told him in technical terms 
— for he was unacquainted with them, — what he had 
achieved, or was on the point of achieving, for there is some 
doubt upon this point ; but the father saw at a glance that 
the figures on the floor were the demonstration, or closely 
approximating to it, of Euclid's thirty-second proposition. 
The sister of Blaise, Madame Perier, says her brother had 
just, indistinctly, as it were ; perceived the true theorem when 



PASCAL. 



65 




surprised by his father. Be this as it may, M. Etienne 
Pascal saw enough to literally frighten him — (il etoit 
epouvante, writes Madame Perier) — and breathlessly ques- 
tioned his son as to how or where he had acquired his know- 
ledge. Blaise, whose intellect had not perhaps been more 
severely tasked at reaching in his twelfth year, unassisted by 
books or oral instruction, the thirty-second proposition in 
Euclid than that of an ordinary boy of the same age might 
have been in achieving a kite, could hardly comprehend his 
father's excitement, and explained that he had arrived so 
far, if far it were, by experimental essays, forward, backward, 
forwards again, as.gleamings of knowledge broke in upon 



64 EXTRAORDINARY MEN". 

liim by dint of unwearied meditation upon " the properties 
of figures." M. Pascal left the house hastily, sought some of 
his scientific friends, and requested them to accompany him 
to the studio of " a born geometer." Those friends, like M. 
Pascal himself, could thoroughly appreciate the astounding 
fact so unexpectedly revealed, and it was determined by 
acclamation that no further hindrance should be offered to 
the boy's scientific predilections ; and from that time he was 
liberally supplied with every requisite necessary for the pro- 
secution of his chosen pursuit. He was also invited to attend 
the meetings of his father's friends, where, though habitually 
an absorbed and eager listener, he would at times throw a 
sudden glance of light upon the discussion which startled 
the scientific veterans almost as much as had the charcoal 
figures on the floor. His progress was now marvellously 
rapid. He was only sixteen when he produced his famous 
paper upon conic sections, in which all that Apollonius of 
Perga had established in this branch of geometry, and 
whereon the fame of the successor to Archimedes chiefly rests, 
was deduced from one single proposition, illustrated by four 
hundred corollaries ; and this without the aid of the algebraic 
formula which Descartes subsequently elaborated for the 
simplification of mathematical calculations. This astonishing 
performance was submitted to Descartes himself, who could 
not be persuaded that it was the production of a lad in his 
sixteenth year, and persisted in believing or affecting to be- 
lieve that Pascal senior, or some one of his friends, was the 
author of the paper. It was only the after mathematical 
eminence of the man, that effectually rebuked Descartes' 
scepticism as to the extraordinary powers of the boy. 

At the time Blaise Pascal was meditating upon " conic 
sections" his father, by one of those caprices of power against 



PASCAL. 65 

which the most inoffensive blameless life is no surety in 
countries despotically governed, was compelled to flee from 
his home, and seek refuge and concealment in Auvergne. 
The circumstances were these : — It was the year 1638, just 
after the termination of the war with England, which had 
so damaged the finances of the French Court, that, amongst 
other measures devised by Chancellor Seguier, for replenish- 
ing the royal coffers, the screw was vigorously applied to the 
Rentiers of the H6tel-de-Ville. This always extremely unplea- 
sant operation of course excited great indignation amongst 
the sufferers, who were, however, wise enough to digest their 
wrath as they best could in silence. Unfortunately, one of 
the Rentiers was an intimate acquaintance of M. Etienne 
Pascal ; and that gentleman, not satisfied with quietly sym- 
pathising with his friend, was so imprudent as to openly 
proclaim his opinion of Chancellor Siguier's oppressive con- 
duct. This was not to be borne ; and upon complaint to 
Cardinal Richelieu a lettre de cachet forthwith issued, author- 
izing the imprisonment of M. Pascal in the Bastille. Timely 
notice of what was going on fortunately reached the intended 
victim ; and he, as we have stated, fled to Auvergne. 
Madame la Duchesse d'Aiquillon, who well knew and 
esteemed the Pascal family, after exhausting all ordinary 
expedients for procuring the recal of the mandate of im- 
prisonment, hit upon an ingenious and happily successful 
device for propitiating the all-powerful cardinal, and re- 
storing M. Pascal to his family. She had a new dramatic 
piece, called Tyrannic Love {V Amour Tyrannique), put in 
rehearsal, with the intention of having it played before his 
eminence, who, a playwright in a small way himself, was 
extremely partial to dramatic representations. The duchess 
had selected the most interesting part in the piece for Jacque- 



00 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

line Pascal, the youngest sister of Blaise, a girl of charming 
personal appearance and graceful manners. Gibberte, the 
elder sister, at first objected to Jacqueline contributing in any 
way to the gratification of her father's oppressor ; but the 
calmer judgment of her brother, and the persuasions of the 
duchess, overcame her scruples, and Jacqueline undertook the 
part, which she played with such natural grace and effect 
that the cardinal was delighted ; and on the duchess present- 
ing Jacqueline to him after the performance, he embraced 
the young girl with the greatest kindness, and asked her if 
there was any favour he could render her. " Yes," replied 
Jacqueline, bursting into tears; "yes, give us back our 
father !" After the first few moments of surprise, and a 
brief explanation by the duchess, the cardinal graciously 
promised compliance with Jacqueline's request ; the lettre de 
cachet was cancelled, and M. Pascal restored to his home. 
The cardinal's interest in the family, first excited by the 
grace and comeliness of Jacqueline, and increased by what 
he heard of the remarkable powers so early manifested by her 
brother, caused him to offer their father the post of Intendant 
of Rouen, in Normandy, which M. Pascal was mainly induced 
:to accept in order that he might be enabled to ensure his 
brilliantly gifted son the life of leisure necessary to the full 
development of his nascent genius. On M. Pascal taking 
possession of his new appointment, he intrusted the calcula- 
tions which formed part of the business of the office to his 
son, whose fertile brain at once conceived the joossibility of 
inventing a machine which should of itself perform all the 
required operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, 
and division. After months of labour, and the construction 
of at least fifty models in wood, ivory, and copper, the task, 
in principle, was successfully accomplished. The machine, 



PASCAL. 67 

which consisted of a number of cylinders studded with 
columns of figures, turned by wheelwork, performed the task 
required of it, excited at the time, enthusiastic admiration, 
and was subsequently presented to Queen Christina of Swe- 
den. But the complex delicacy of the apparatus, and the 
great facilities for calculation given by the invention of the 
logarithms, combined to render it practically valueless ; and 
like a similar contrivance by Leibnitz, and another, in our 
own day, by Babbage, Pascal's arithmetical machine was at 
once a marvel and a folly — an evidence of wondrous mechan- 
ical genius, and the futile tasks on which it sometimes wastes 
its energies. 

The after scientific achievements of Blaise Pascal, which 
have invested his name with imperishable lustre, belong to 
the history of his manhood; but I cannot close this brief 
chronicle of his earlier years without remarking that the fer- 
vent faith in the truths of Christianity which induced him, 
in the very noon of his intellectual vigour and scientific fame, 
to calmly put aside all pursuits which tended to divert his 
mind from the contemplation of the unspeakable hereafter, 
which coloured and dominated all his thoughts — was kindled 
in his boyhood, becoming only brighter, clearer, as the years 
brought knowledge and wisdom. Especially the rare faculty 
in one so marvellously gifted with high-reaching, self-sufficing 
intellect, that clearly discerned, through all the dazzling illu- 
sions of mental pride, the exact point which passing, reason, 
till then a steadfast, guiding light, changes to a misleading 
meteor, luring him who follows it to abysmal labyrinths 
wherein he finds no rest, or end, — " in wandering mazes lost." 
He was but eighteen when, in reply to a remark on the in- 
compatibility of reason with revelation, he gave utterance to 
the remark reproduced in such various lights and aspects in 



68 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

his ' Thoughts :' — " Ay, as you say, reason confounds revela- 
tion; but then creation,— existence confounds reason. Ask 
reason what it has to say of an eternity gone past — of the 
interminability of space : and yet existence, a past eternity, 
interminability of space, are self-evident facts ! True, reason is 
a truth and power in her own domain, — beyond it, a false- 
hood and a juggle." In fact, every attribute of character 
which marked his maturity was but the continuous develop- 
ment of qualities which grew with him from his earliest 
youth, — the stupendous intellect united with the humblest, 
simplest faith, — the playful sparkling wit, the polished subtle 
sarcasm, restrained only by kindliness and generosity of mind, 
— the passionate devotion to truth ; — in all things the child 
was emphatically the Father of the man, ay, even the mor- 
bid asceticism which threw a gloom over his last days was 
but the diseased development of what in his boyhood had 
been abnegation of his own wishes — unhesitating self-sacrifice, 
if the happiness of others might be advanced thereby. 




THE DUKE OF MARLBOROUGH. 

npHERE is no part of the history of his country which an 
-"- Englishman, jealous for its honour, would so gladly blot 
out as the annals of the Restoration. National calamity in. 
its worst shapes, — famine, pestilence, the loss of battle, suc- 
cessful invasion by the Roman, Saxon, Dane, and Norman, 
meet us in the earlier portions of the chequered volume ; but 
the dark shadows there, are relieved by brilliant lights, whilst 
in the restored Stuart's reign the leaves when not stained 
with innocent and noble blood, are grimed with grossest pro- 
fligacy. Such names as Oates, Scroggs, Jefferys, alternating 
with those of Buckingham, Rochester, Lady Castlemaine, the 
Duchess of Portsmouth, and others of a like odour; the 
charming catalogue fitly headed and graced by the crowned 
pensioner of France, calling himself Charles, King of Eng- 
land, and his equally unprincipled and despotic brother, 
James. Apart from the list of the victims of that unhappy 



70 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

period, there is scarcely one historic name which is not more 
or less tainted with its slime, — and few more disastrously so 
than that of the distinguished military chieftain whose name 
heads this brief memoir, — the youth of whom, moulded in 
that hot-bed of corruption was fatally impressed with a venal 
bias which dwarfed and disfigured his great achievements, 
and has rendered the biography of John Churchill, Duke of 
Marlborough, victor of Ramilies and Blenheim, one of the 
saddest and most painful lessons upon record. 

The Churchills, or Courcelles ? as the name was formerly 
written, came in like the Slys, with the Conqueror, and 
appear to have been of eminence amongst the followers of the 
Duke of Normandy, inasmuch as Roger de Courcelles is set 
down in Doinesday Booh as the possessor of lordships in 
"Wilts, Somerset, Dorset, and Salop. The name does not, 
however, reappear in the annals of the kingdom with any 
especial splendour, till the intermarriage of the family with 
the Drakes of Devonshire, Sir Winstone Churchill having 
espoused towards the middle of the seventeenth century, a 
daughter of Sir John Drake of Ashe, Devonshire, by whom 
he had issue, Winstone, John, and Arabella Churchill, — John, 
the second son, afterwards Duke of Marlborough, having been 
born at his grandfather's house on the 24th of June, 1650, and 
baptized by the Rev. Matthew Drake, rector of the parish of 
Ashe, on the 28th of the same month. Sir Winstone Churchill 
obtained at the Restoration a subordinate office at Court, 
and was the author of a political history of slight merit 
called Divi Britannia, but his pecuniary resources had withal 
become very attenuated, — the lordships of Roger de Courcelles 
having slipped, as lordships often will, from the family's grasp 
long before. Winstone Churchill died early, and John was 
consequently heir to his father's possessions, but of such in- 



MARLBOROUGH. 71 

considerable value was that contingency deemed, that it was 
constantly impressed upon the handsome boy and his beauti- 
ful sister Arabella, that their advancement in the world must 
entirely depend upon the favour they might acquire with the 
influential people of the Court. A favourable opening for 
success in the suggested mode of life was procured, by John 
becoming page to the Duke of York, and Arabella, maid of 
honour to the Duchess. John Churchill's education, such as 
it was, had been chiefly obtained at St. Paul's School, then 
presided over by a gentleman of the euphonious name of Dr. 
Crumlepolm. Whilst there, the military bent of the boy's 
mind was displayed, according to the following circum- 
stantial testimony, which, however, is rendered somewhat 
doubtful by the fact, that the Duke of Marlborough's know- 
ledge of Latin was of the slenderest kind, — by his partiality, 
though any thing but bookishly inclined, for the study of 
Vegetius de Re MUitari. " From this very book," writes the 
Rev. Mr. North, rector of Colyton, " from this very book, 
John Churchill, scholar of this school, afterwards the cele- 
brated Duke of Marlborough, first learnt the elements of the 
art of war, as was told to me, George North, on Saint Paul's 
day, 1714-5, by an old clergyman, who said he was a con- 
temporary scholar, was then well acquainted with him, and 
frequently saw him read it. This I testify to be true. G. 
North, Rector of Colyton." 

At all events the young man's scholastic studies, civil or 
military, were neither severe nor protracted, inasmuch as he 
was an ensign in the Foot Guards before he was sixteen years 
of age. The commission was the gift of the Duke of York, 
to whom he had for some time been page of honour, and has 
been erroneously atributed to the influence of his sister 
Arabella with his royal highness — an imputation which seems 



72 



EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 




to be unfounded, that young lady not having then become 
the Duke's mistress. The favour was apparently obtained by 
the bold solicitation of John Churchill himself, who having 
been present with the Duke of York, at a review of the two 
regiments of Guards, was so fascinated with the pomp and 
circumstance of war as there displayed, that upon returning 
to the palace he threw himself at James's feet, and vehemently 
solicited a commission in one of the royal regiments. His 
request was granted, all the more readily, according to the 
scandalous gossip of the time, that the suit of the singularly 
handsome page was supported by the influence of the Duchess 
of York. This anecdote, or at least the inference suggested 
by it, is, there can be little doubt, a calumny; but it is quite 



MAKLBOKOUGH. 73 

certain that another and quite as influential a lady was so 
dazzled by the young soldier's appearance in his new uniform 
that she presented hi™ with a gift of extraordinary munifi- 
cence. This we have upon the direct and positive authority of 
Lord Chesterfield. " The Duchess of Cleveland," writes his lord- 
ship, " was so struck by the beautiful figure of young Churchill 
when an ensign of the Guards, that she gave him five thou- 
sand pounds, with which he bought an annuity for his life of 
five hundred a-year of my grandfather Halifax." Such an 
expensive Lothario, it must have occurred to the Duchess of 
Cleveland's patrons, would be much better, less expensively, 
at any rate, employed in making conquests of the Moors, 
instead of the ladies of the court, for Ensign Churchill was 
forthwith shipped off to Africa, to assist in defending 
Tangiers against the desultory attacks of the Arabs. Arrived 
there the juvenile officer quickly showed that he was no mere 
parade holiday soldier, by volunteering in every enterprise 
which bore the inviting aspect of danger, and promised glory, 
renown. He was cool, too, as he was daring and adven- 
turous ; and well for him that he was, especially upon one 
occasion, when he found himself on a sudden most un- 
pleasantly circumstanced. He had wandered forth, one 
brilliant moonlit night, for what purpose does not appear, 
by a circuitous route, to a considerable distance from the 
lines, and was returning when he came plump upon a rather 
numerous party of Moors, when least thinking or desirous of 
such a rencontre. The Moors were busy with their supper, 
and before they could get to their feet or their arms, Ensign 
Churchill was already at a considerable distance, and speed- 
ing along at a rate which rendered foot pursuit — and the 
broken rocky ground precluded the use of horses — hopeless. 
There was, however, a rocky ledge on the other side 

F 



74 EXT&AOKDINARY HEN. 

of a deep chasm, which separated hira from the Moors, 
which he must pass, where their guns could easily reach 
him. Thither the Moors tunmltuously hurried, so that 
there seemed nothing for it but that the gallant ensign 
must run the gauntlet past a score of bullets discharged 
from point-blank distance at his handsome person. The 
situation was a dismal one, and when clearly ascertained 
caused the young officer to pause in somewhat anxious doubt, 
as to what under the circumstances had best be done. He 
had been pursued in a direct line by one Moor, who had 
started instantly in chase, thinking, of course, to be followed 
by some of his countrymen, but that not being the case, the 
instant the Englishman halted he halted also, incident unwil- 
lingness to encounter the chase single-handed. To give him 
confidence, Ensign Churchill lowered the point of his sword, 
and bowed his head in token of surrender. This not suc- 
ceeding, he threw his sword on the ground, pulled out his 
watch, and held it temptingly up in the glittering moonlight, 
at the same time falling upon his knees and laying his fore- 
head in the dust, in token of absolute submission. The 
Moor, unable to resist the temptation, came quickly up, 
placed his foot exultingly upon the prostrate Englishman's 
neck, held out his hand for the proffered watch, and the next 
moment was sprawling on his back ! To disarm and secure 
the astounded Moor, and make him thoroughly comprehend, 
notwithstanding the ensign's deficiency in the Moorish 
tongue, that any attempt at disturbing the arrangement 
about to be carried into effect would be incontinently followed 
by his being hurled down the precipice along the narrow 
ledge whereof, commanded by the guns of the Moors, it was 
necessary to pass. This clone, Ensign Churchill mounted the 
Moor upon his back, taking care to carry him in such a way 



MAP.L30EGUGH. 75 

that the bullets of the young man's friends must necessarily- 
pass through his body, before reaching his own more precious 
person. Thus panoplied, Ensign Churchill boldly presented 
himself before the opening in the rocks, and safely passed it, 
though almost stunned by the yells of his friend on his 
back, shrieking to his countrymen not to fire, for the love of 
Allah, and the fierce execrations of the baffled Arabs, mingled, 
however, with bursts of half-angry laughter. The ravine 
passed, Ensign Churchill liberated the Moor, and hastened 
on to rejoin his friends, and did not again on any pretence 
venture forth in search of African night adventures. 

Handsome Churchill was not long condemned to banish- 
ment in Africa. The Duke of York recalled him, and for a 
long time he was permitted to bask in the smiles of the fair and 
facile ladies of the court, and save money by their lavish 
liberality in the way of presents. It was not long either 
before his sister, the beautiful Arabella Churchill, was 
promoted from the service of the Duchess to that of the 
Duke of York, and flaunted it openly as the recognised 
mistress of His Royal Highness. Ensign Churchill, mean- 
while becoming, as was but just, Captain Churchill, — and 
subsequently, through the same influence, reaching higher 
grades in the service. The love of military adventure 
burned with equal ardour in his bosom, — as his chivalrous 
ambition and the love of money, and he gladly made a 
campaign under Turenne and Conde, in Germany. At the 
siege of Nieniugen, '-the handsome Englishman" greatly 
distinguished himself by his dashing bravery, conjoined with 
cool imperturbable skill and judgment. Turenne formed a 
high opinion of his military capabilities, and in consequence 
of his report, the King of France openly complimented 
Captain Churchill in the face of the troops. The Marshal, 

f 2 



76 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

once, with a want of consideration unusual with him, put the 
personal daring of his foreign favourite to a severe test, and 
for an inadequate object. A French Lieutenant-Colonel had 
been driven out of a post during the siege of Nimeguen, and 
he alleged in excuse that it was impossible for any one to 
have maintained it with the force he commanded. " I will 
wager a supper and a dozen of claret," rejoined Turenne, 
" that the handsome Englishman will retake it with half the 
number." The wager was accepted ; Captain Churchill, in- 
formed of what was expected of him, selected his men at 
once, retook the post, and maintained it till relieved by 
another officer. He soon afterwards returned to England. 

It is another amongst the inconsistencies of this strangely- 
compounded soldier, — a man of the most heroic and the 
meanest impulses, — of soaring ambition and grovelling pro- 
pensities, that he was capable of the fervent passion with 
which portionless Sarah Jennings, — one of two beautiful 
sisters, — the eldest of whom became Duchess of Richmond, — 
the daughters of Mr. Jennings of Sandridge, near St. Albans, — 
inspired him. The Earl of Lindsay was a rival suitor, but 
Churchill carried off the prize, and spite of the lady's tartar 
tongue, it is morally certain, that but for Sarah, Duchess of 
Marlborough, that name would not have acquired the lustre 
which attaches to it, dimmed as it is by the great Duke's 
defects of character, the more to be regretted, because 
associated with high and noble qualities. There is one man in 
English history between whom and the Duke of Marlborough 
there is in many respects a striking resemblance, though their 
powerful minds were cast in entirely different moulds, and their 
pursuits were of a totally opposite character, — Lord Chancellor 
Bacon. In both grandeur of intellect was dwarfed and 
sullied by mean, ignoble cravings, — the one plundered the 



MARLBOROUGH. 



77 



suitors of his court, — the other, the soldiers upon whose 
blood he had been floated to victory and fortune. Bacon was 
corrupted by the vanities of the court of the first James, — 
Marlborough corrupted by the example of the second ; and 
both have left a name as imperishable as the genius by which 
it was illustrated. 





PETER THE GREAT. 

A BOUT the same time that the memorable struggle be- 
-^*- tweeu Charles and the Long Parliament was taking 
place in England, the Romanoffs had begun to erect an auto- 
cratic throne upon the crumbling ruins of the heterogeneous, 
disjointed feudalism of Muscovy, thereby clearing the way, 
and initiating, in some sort unconsciously, the subsequent 
advance of the Russian power to its present influential posi- 
tion, territorial as well as political, in Europe. At the acces- 
sion of Alexius, the second of the Romanoffs, and father .' of 
Peter I., usually styled the Great, the government of Muscovy 
was little better than a ferocious anarchy, dominated and 
varied from time to time by the unscrupulous use of the 
knout and the capricious violence of the Strelitz, a privileged 
militia, much resembling the Turkish janissaries, about 20,000 
of whom kept Moscow in a state of chronic perturbation 



PETER THE GREAT. 79 

and dismay. Alexius did much to evoke something like 
order from out this chaos. The landed Boyards who claimed 
and exercised unquestioned power — to the taking away of 
life — over their serfs, were in some measure restrained in 
their lawless violence, and brought under subjection to the 
Czar's authority, — the courts of justice ceased grossly and 
audaciously to prostitute the functions they were professedly 
instituted to administer, — the first two vessels of the Russian 
commercial marine were built ; and had his life been longer 
spared, it is probable that Alexius would have reduced the 
Strelitz to submission by means less ruthless and sanguinary 
than were subsequently had recourse to by his celebrated son. 
The growing interest felt by the new race of Czars in the 
politics of Europe, was evidenced by the special embassy 
which Alexius sent to this country to congratulate Charles II. 
upon his restoration to the British throne; albeit Clarendon's 
suggestion of furthering the intercourse between the two 
nations by a treaty of commerce was not entertained by 
Alexius, he, like nearly all persons groping in the twilight of 
economical science, believing that to sell without buying is 
the true secret of commercial enterprise and success. 

Peter I., who was three years old when his father died, 
had literally to fight his way, by force and policy, to the 
throne of almost wholly barbarian Russia. Alexius was 
twice married, and each time had selected his bride in ac- 
cordance with the traditional policy and practice of the Czars. 
That policy and practice consisted in the avoidance of foreign 
alliances, and the assembling together by proclamation, at 
Moscow, of the most beautiful damsels in Russia — no matter 
for their social rank, whether peasant or princely, — from 
whom the future Czarina was selected by the Imperial 
bachelor or widower as the case might be. Alexius espoused, 



80 EXTRAORDINARY MEX. 

in first nuptials, a daughter of the Boyard, Milonafskoi, by 
whom he had two sods and six daughters. Fedor and Ivan, 
the sons, were stunted, weakly children, — the first only phy- 
sically, but Ivan was both mentally and physically dwarfed 
and decrepit. Of the daughters only one has left a name in 
history, — 'not traced in lustrous characters, though in this, as 
in all similar cases, it is well to bear in mind that her story 
has been written by the literary parasites of her successful 
competitor and antagonist. This lady's name was Sophia, 
a person of remarkable beauty, imperious, daring will, and 
high-reaching ambition. Soon after the decease of the first 
Czarina, Alexius again married, his choice this time falling 
upon Natalie Nariskkin, who bore him two children, one the 
world-famous Peter, the other a daughter, baptized Natalie 
after her mother. 

This second marriage threw the Milonafskoi family into the 
shade, from which however they instantly emerged upon the 
Czar Alexius' death, headed and championed by the Princess 
Sophia, who, although, even then, vehemently ambitious of 
the sceptre for herself, had the prudence to claim it for her 
brother Fedor, who it was abundantly clear would not long 
even ostensibly wield it himself, — nor bequeath it to a 
progeny of his own. Alexius had designated the infant 
robust son of Natalie Narishkin as his successor, but Sophia's 
success in gaining over the Strelitz, and the populace of 
Moscow, partly by the fascination of her beauty, — in its most 
attractive aspect, rainbowed and pearled with tears, — partly 
by a judicious scattering of slight gifts and splendid promises — 
dispelled the widowed Czarina's hope of realizing the dying 
wishes of her husband, and Fedor ascended the Muscovite 
throne (1676), without encountering serious opposition, — the 
actual government of his dominions being intrusted almost 



PETER THE GREAT. 81 

as a matter of necessity, to his capable and aspiring sister. 
This vicarious rule lasted till 1682, — six years only, when 
the death of Fedor compelled the Princess Sophia to play a 
more daring game, if she would not see the intoxicating cup 
of supreme power dashed from her lips for ever. She conse- 
quently put forth a claim to the throne as the oldest daughter 
of Alexius by his first marriage, who, it was maintained, 
succeeded of right to the sceptre in default of competent heirs 
male in the same family ; a condition of things, Fedor being 
dead, and Ivan notoriously imbecile, that now existed. The 
commander of the Strelitz, Prince Kovanskoi, was easily 
gained over to this theory of regal succession by smiles and 
promises, and the soldiers and Moscow rabble, excited by the 
harangues and largesses of the Princess, — infuriated by 
brandy, and a dark rumour industriously propagated that 
Fedor had been poisoned by a foreign physician at the 
instigation of the Narishkins, broke into open violence. 
Every person suspected of favouring the Narishkin party, 
that could be met with, was ruthlessly massacred, and it was 
not loDg before the motley rabble surged tumultuously in the 
direction of the "palace where the Czarina Natalie and her 
son Peter, then about nine years old, awaited with feverish 
anxiety the course and issue of the sudden insurrection, 
which it seemed almost equally hopeless to strive to flee from 
as to resist. Repeated messages to Sophia for military aid 
were evasively replied to by assurances that no harm was 
contemplated by the naturally exasperated people, towards 
the widow and son of the Czar Alexius j it being an essential 
point with Sophia, whilst contriving the death of the boy 
Peter, whose existence she felt was incompatible with her 
permanent supremacy, to keep apparently aloof from any 
participation in a deed which would be sure to breed remorse 



82 



EXTRAOKDINAItY MEN. 



in the minds of the very people by whom she hoped it would 
be perpetrated. Peter — boy — child almost that he was, pas- 
sionately urged his mother not to wait there in dependence 
upon the assurances of that "jezebel Sophia till the knife was 
actually at their throats," but to flee at once as the only chance 
of avoiding death. Natalie still hesitated, when the din and 
tumult of actual assault convinced her alike of the imminence 
of the peril, and the necessity of instant flight if she hoped to 
elude it. She left the palace with her son by a private 
passage in its rear, both hurriedly disguised, and hastened with 
the speed of fear, on foot, towards the convent of the Trinity, 
at a considerable distance from Moscow, the chief pope, or, as 
we should say, abbot of which was a Narishkin partizan. The 
stubborn defence of the palace alone could render the escape 
of the Czarina and her son possible, and in this their relatives 
and servants did not fail them. After the outer gates were 
forced, the staircase leading to the apartments in which the 
leaders of the insurgents supposed the boy-prince and his 
mother still were was disputed with unquailing resolution by 
Natalie's two brothers and the domestics, and it was over 
their dead bodies that the furious Strelitz at last rushed into 
the interior rooms in eager quest of their prince victim, — 
only to find them empty, — the fiercely-sought prize escaped 
their murderous clutch. Parties of soldiers were as quickly 
as possible dispatched to scour the roads leading from Moscow, 
one of the most active and numerous of which tracked the 
Czarina and her son, in the direction of the convent of the 
Trinity. 

The terrified mother and her boy had left the roar and 
tumult of the city far behind, and were debating whether the 
lights in the distance, which, from the undulating wood- 
dotted intervening country, now shone out in fast-increasing 



PETER THE GREAT. 83 

brightness, — and anon vanished in the thick darkness, 
were or were not the convent lights, — Peter insisting 
they were, and that the across-field course they had taken 
by his persuasion, had saved them several versts of road, 
when the hurrying tramp and shoutings of soldiers in 
the not far off distance warned them, that fainting, exhausted 
as they were, life could only be preserved by renewed and in- 
creased exertion. The pursuers had been thrown out by the 
unusual direction taken at the instance of the young prince, 
and there might yet be time enough to reach the haven of a, 
but after all precarious, doubtful security. They succeeded 
in doing so, and the reverend fathers gathered around them 
with sympathetic terror ; for how, upon so sudden a demand, 
should they be able to ensure the princely fugitives even a 
temporary refuge from their eager, unscrupulous foes ! As 
they yet talked bewilderedly, the clamorous uproar at the 
outer gate apprised them of the arrival of the Strelitz. 
Maternal love inspired Natalie with a happy thought. "With 
the aid of one of the popes (priests), she lifted her son upon the 
high altar, placing him by the side, and under the immediate 
guardianship as it were, of the sacred and mysterious host. 
She had scarcely done so, when the Strelitz rushed up the 
aisles of the convent church, and fiercely demanded the boy 
Peter Narishkin. " Behold him !" replied the Superior; " he 
is there with God !" A sense of religious awe, — or of super- 
stitious reverence, as the reader pleases, — rebuked the drunken 
violence of the soldiers. They became instantly silent, — 
aghast, — panic stricken by the imexpected, imposing sight, 
and the accompanying words of the priest. One, however, 
more reckless, or less impressionable than his fellows, rushed 
forward after a few moments' pause into the sanctuary, and 
raised his sword to cut down the prince where he stood. The 



84 



EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 




blow was so feebly aimed, that one of the priests easily caught 
the man's arm and thrust him back, saying as he did so, 
" Not in this place." The panic- terror of the soldiery might 
not perhaps have lasted very long, but fortunately, when at 
its highest, the gallop of horse was heard as if approaching, 
and the Superior with admirable presence of mind exclaimed 
— " Ah ! here at last come our friends. Let the enemies of 
God and the Czar tremble." In another minute the convent 



PETER THE GREAT. 85 

was cleared of the Strelitz, and the most terrible crisis ever 
encountered by Peter the First had happily passed away. 

The Narishkin interest, though surprised, and for a brief 
space defeated and dismayed by Sophia's measures, took heart 
and rallied as soon as it was known that the young prince 
and his mother were in safety ; and the partially baffled prin- 
cess was ultimately fain to content herself with the title and 
attributes of regent, her imbecile brother Ivan being pro- 
claimed Czar, and Peter associated with him in a nominal 
authority, — Sophia's regency to terminate on Peter's attaining 
his majority. Ivan's accession took place on the 7th of June, 
1682. 

But temporary power was only valued by the regent as 
affording means and opportunity of rendering it permanent. 
She married Ivan to a young person entirely devoted to 
herself, of the name of Soltikof, — an utter mockery of the 
sacrament, it was well known, — notwithstanding which, the 
pregnancy of the nominal wife of the Czar was, though a 
considerable time afterwards, audaciously proclaimed. This 
iniquitous device appears to have been intended by the prin- 
cess regent as a contingent plea for prolonging her regent al 
authority in the event of again failing to rid herself of Peter. 
Direct, open violence could not, especially too soon after 
what had recently occurred, be safely resorted to for the 
accomplishment of this paramount purpose. The reputation, 
moreover, for precocious sagacity, extraordinary vigour as 
well of body as mind, which, thanks to the busy whisperings 
of the Narishkin party, Peter was acquiring with the people, 
rendered him all the more dangerous, and at the same time, 
suggested a mode of dealing with him, highly characteristic 
of this wily, unscrupulous princess. General Baseville, said 
to be a Scotchman, who had previously superintended Peter's 



8G EXTRAORDINARY MEX. 

education, was dismissed, and a compliant tool of the regent's 
appointed in his stead. The youthful prince was next domi- 
ciled at an obscure village considerably distant from Moscow, 
and gradually surrounded with from about eighty to a hundred 
of the most profligate young Russians that could be raked 
together. " Amusers" they were called, and their well-under- 
stood mission was to entice Peter into the love and practice 
of the grosser and corrupting vices — drunkenness especially — 
with the view, of course, to destroy alike the prince's intellect 
and health. 

The regent had not taken the true measure of the intellect 
she would have dwarfed and ruined. Instead of the amusers 
seducing the Prince into habits of folly and intemperance, he 
beguiled them into a liking for manly sports and martial 
exercises. His revenue was considerable, and he was inde- 
fatigable in his efforts quietly to organize and discipline a 
small but effective force which might at an emergency, not 
difficult to foresee, stand him in good stead. The "Amusers" 
foianed the nucleus of this force, and Peter displayed in its 
formation the same spirit of practical example and self- 
application, which induced him at a subsequent period to 
work with his own hands in the dockyards of Holland. He 
first took rank only as a private ; rose by such gradations of 
command as indisputable efficiency in his duties warranted; 
and in the construction of mimic fortifications, dug, shovelled, 
and wheeled barrow-loads of earth with a zeal and alacrity 
that never slackened. About this time, also, he attached 
to his person and service. Le Port and Gordon — the first a 
Genevese, originally intended for commercial pursuits, but of 
a far too adventurous and mercurial a temperament to settle 
down into peaceful, prosaic life — the other a sedately sagacious 
Scotch soldier, intent upon pushing his fortunes in a country 



PETER THE GREAT. 87 

offering peculiar advantages at that time to such men as he 
and Le Fort. The counsel of these two gentlemen was of 
great service to the young Czar-expectant, and it was to them 
he was afterwards indebted for his admirable foreign troops, 
recruited in a large degree by Huguenots, driven from the 
continent by the revocation of the edict of Nantz, and Scots- 
men, whom the troubles consequent upon James's expulsion 
from the British throne had compelled into exile. 

Meanwhile, the princess-regent, who appears to have been 
utterly disdainful of Peter's playing-at-soldiers' propensity, as 
she deemed it, had other obstacles in her path to sweep away. 
Prince Kovanskoi, the commander of the Strelitz, incensed 
that she should exhibit more favour towards Gallitzin, a 
minister of state under Fedor, than to himself, insolently 
demanded, by way of satisfaction for past slights and neglect, 
that Sophia should marry his son to one of her sisters. The 
regent's reply to this proposal, was an order for the arrest of 
Prince Kovanskoi ; and notwithstanding a fierce but abortive 
insurrection of a considerable number of the Strelitz in his 
favour — during which, by the way, Sophia took refuge in the 
convent of the Trinity with Ivan — he was beheaded, and the 
revolt severely repressed. 

In the very flush and glow of this success, Sophia heard of 
Peter's marriage, — he being in his 17th year, — with the 
daughter of Colonel Lapuchee. " Heirs to the throne," 
replied the Prince, to Sophia's angry and menacing expostu- 
lation, " are likely to be numerous, and my children ought to 
have a chance with the rest." He alluded to the reported 
pregnancy of Ivan's wife. There was dauger in this auda- 
cious boy, and the regent's remorseless courage grew with 
the provocation to its exercise. At a magnificent ceremonial 
of the Greek Church in the Easter week, at which it had been. 



88 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

customary for the czar to attend, Peter, as Ivan was too ill 
to be present, insisted upon his right to be there as his repre- 
sentative. Sophia haughtily objected to the prince's demand, 
and attended herself, not as regent merely, — but openly, 
ostentatiously assuming the demeanour and attributes of a 
crowned empress of Russia. There could be no longer peace 
or truce between the rival potentates, and the regent once 
more essayed her former arts with the lately-humbled 
Strelitz — again succeeded, — partially at all events, and about 
a thousand of the soldiery marched to seize Peter, who had 
again taken refuge at the convent of the Trinity. The 
licentious habits of the Strelitz had proved as fatal to their 
courage as to their discipline, and upon finding the convent 
strongly fortified and garrisoned, they forthwith abandoned 
the enterprise, and returned in confusion and dismay to 
Moscow. A movement in that city by the Narishkin party, 
vigorously seconded by the boy-prince and his trained 
retainers, ensued, and the not long delayed result was, the 
enforced retirement of the Princess Sophia to a nunnery; the 
banishment of Gallitzin, with the magnificent pension of 
three copecks (half-pence) per diem, and the installation of 
Peter the First (Oct. 4th, 1689), as czar of all the Russias. 

As might, under favouring circumstances, have been 
expected, the iron-willed, self-reliant, practically-inclined, 
clear-headed boy, nurtured amidst violence, and in constant 
peril from the machinations of fierce and implacable ene- 
mies, dilated and hardened as the years passed on, into the 
imperious, indefatigable, keen-visioned, ruthless benefactor 
and despot of the country he ruled, scourged and reformed. 




BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

npHERE are few lives more pleasant to contemplate than 
-*- that of Benjamin Franklin, chiefly, no donbt, that it 
presents no very abrupt and startling effects, and that ordi- 
nary mortals, who look to the biographies of eminent men 
for practical lessons in the philosophy which teaches by in- 
dividual examples, are not dismayed quite as much as they 
are dazzled, by discovering that the success of the hero of the 
narrative has mainly resulted from the display of a marvellous 
intellectual power, possessed by a very slight per-centage of 
mankind, or an extraordinary conjunction of favouring cir- 
cumstances which none but fools will calculate upon meeting 
with in their own experience. A journeyman printer, the 
son of humble parents, endowed with no more of what is un- 
derstood by the term genius than falls to the lot of thousands 
of men who live and die in obscurity, is seen to attain a good 

G 



90 EXTRAORDINARY UK 

position iii business, an eminent one in political society, and 
a highly respectable name in science and literature, by the 
aid alone of strong, clear common sense, combined with in- 
tegrity, temperance, and persevering industry. It is quite 
true that but for the American revolution Dr. Franklin 
would not have been the ambassador of the United States at 
the Court of France; but his enduring reputation does not 
rest upon his achievements as a politician, — and there can 
be little question that his worldly position, in a substantial 
sense, would have been improved, — his rank, as a man of 
science, a much higher one, — and that he might perhaps have 
won for himself a bright and lasting wreath in the fields of 
literature in place of the few stray and perishing blossoms 
which he had leisure to gather there, had not imperious cir- 
cumstances compelled him to involve himself in the stormy 
struggles of jwlitical warfare. Hence it is that the example 
of Franklin is of wider application, of more practical efficacy, 
than the history of more brilliant heroes of biography affords, 
and certainly, in no part of that life-lesson is the moral which 
it points more clearly indicated than in its earlier chapters. 

Benjamin Franklin, the youngest son and youngest child 
save two of a family of seventeen children, thirteen of whom 
grew up to man and womanhood, was born on the 6th of 
January, 1706, at Boston, New England, whither his father, 
Josiah Franklin, had emigrated with his first wife and three 
children, from Northamptonshire, in 16S-5. Benjamin's 
mother, espoused in second nuptials by his father, was Abiah 
Folger, daaghter of Peter Folger, one of the earlier settlers 
in New England, and according to the testimony of the 
Reverend Cotton Mather, u a godly and learned Englishman/' 
who had rendered himself obnoxious to the ruling power- in 
the colony by his denunciations, with both tongue and pen, 



FEAXKLIX. 91 

of their cruel intolerance towards dissidents from, their own 
mode of faith and worship. As a matter of course he was 
branded as a slanderous libeller, an imputation which he took 
in great dudgeon, and replied to in some verses which show 
that if, as Dr. Franklin remarks, his own passionate abhor- 
rence of persecution was inherited from his maternal grand- 
father, the rhyming faculty with which he was gifted mnnt 
have been derived from some other source : — 

"Because to be a libeller, 
I hate it with my heart. 
From Sherborne town where now I dwell, 
My name I do put here ; 
Without offence, your real friend, 
It is Peter Folger." 

Franklin traces, not without some degree of pride, his 
ancestry on hi3 father's side to the time when the name was 
that of a numerous and independent class of English yeomanry. 
It was retained as a personal patronynie, with thirty free- 
hold acres near Ecton. Northamptonshire, which had remained, 
probably, in the family for 300 years, when a female cousin of 
the doctor's, who married one Fisher, sold the estate to a Mr. 
Isted. Before, however, this occurred, the father of Benjamin 
Franklin was settled, and moderately prospering in Boston, as a 
chandler and soap boiler ; the business of dyeing, which he com- 
menced with, not then succeeding well in America. He was 
a fairly-educated and naturally shrewd intelligent man ; could 
draw prettily, and play with some skill on the violin ; and 
withal, it would seem, was somewhat of a humourist. — It was 
his expressed intention to devote Benjamin as a propitiatory 
tythe-oifering to the service of the church : with which view 
he kept the boy at a grammar school, till he was eight years 
old, and encouraged his uncle and godfather, Benjamin — a 
worthy man, who had concocted two large quarto volumes 

g2 



92 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

of manuscript poetry, which, but for the stolid inappreciation 
of English and American publishers, would have delighted 
mankind — to devote his literary talents to the preparation of 
a large number of sermons. So that his nephew and god- 
child might start in his clerical career with a good stock of 
ready-made eloquence and sound divinity. Suddenly dis- 
covering, however, that the cost of a college education for 
his son was much beyond his means, Mr. Josiah Franklin 
transferred Benjamin to a common school, kept by a Mr. 
Brownwell, and soon after he was ten years old enlisted his 
services in the soap-boiling business ; an occupation which the 
boy greatly disliked, partly from his strong predilection for 
the life of a sailor — long before embraced by one of his elder 
brothers — which ever presents itself in an enticing if delusive 
aspect to the bold spirited younkers of a sea-port town, with 
its exciting panorama of ships sailing away with favouring 
winds, and returning, richly-laden with the produce of far- 
off mysterious lands beyond the sea. The lad had already 
self-qualified himself, to some extent, for the profession which 
had taken such strong hold of his imagination, by learning 
to swim well and confidently, and exercising himself in boat 
management. But fate and his father proved adverse to his 
wishes, and it was determined he should be a landsman and 
a mechanic, though in what particular branch of handicraft 
was for some time undecided. His cousin, Samuel, son of 
Uncle Ben, who had commenced business as a cutler, 
demanded an apprentice fee of such unkinsmanlike magnitude 
that the intention of binding him to that business was 
necessarily abandoned, and a possibility of being permitted to 
fight the battle of life amongst the whales of the Arctic 
seas again loomed doubtfully in the distance. His educa- 
tion, meanwhile, though he was no longer at school, pro- 



FRANKLIN. 93 

gressed favourably. The very common boy-propensity to 
devour books was, in his case, accompanied by a much rarer 
craving to digest and thoroughly master what he read ; and 
there is one part of the boy's home nurture which demands 
especial notice on account of the paramount influence it 
exercised over his subsequent fortunes. A cultivated, sensi- 
tive palate was about the worst accomplishment, in his 
father's opinion, which persons having to push their own 
rough way in the world could be plagued with — an axiom in 
domestic economics which the daily task of providing food 
for fifteen hearty feeders, including himself and wife, had no 
doubt a powerful tendency to reinforce and confirm ; and he 
consequently never made himself, nor permitted others to 
make, the slightest remark commendatory or otherwise, upon 
the food placed before them ; savoury or unsavoury, ill or 
well cooked, half raw, dried up, done to a turn or bubble — 
no comment was allowed ; and such in this, as in all other 
life-practices, was the effect of habit, that Dr. Franklin declares 
he had not the slightest choice or taste in matters of eating 
or drinking, and that five minutes after he had dined, it 
required a considerable effort of memory to recall to mind 
what he had partaken of — a deficiency of gastronomical appre- 
ciation which a Frenchman would no doubt hold to be sig- 
nificant of a lamentably low state of civilization, but which 
nevertheless, proved to be the key-stone of Benjamin Frank- 
lin's elevation in the social scale. 

In 1717 Benjamin's much older brother Josiah, returned 
from England with presses and types, and commenced busi- 
ness in Boston as a master printer, and received Benjamin 
as an in-door apprentice. The boy's sea-dreams being thus 
finally dissipated, he manfully resigned himself to the thence- 
forth inevitable fact, and addressed himself to the acquire 



94 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

inent of the printer's craft with zealous industry. It was 
not long, moreover, before he hit upon a novel mode of 
increasing his brother's business, and at the same time ven- 
tilating, in some slight degree, his own secret ambition of 
authorship. He wrote two ballads — one woful, called the 
Light House Tragedy, in which the untimely deaths of 
Captain Wetherlake and his two daughters were rhymingly 
set forth. The other was triumphal, and celebrative of the 
recent capture and death of Blackbeard, a notorious pirate. 
These were composed and sent to press; and the author, 
at his master-brother's suggestion, hawked and cried them 
about the streets of Boston. Blackbeard had a tremendous 
run, but the more doleful ditty went off less briskly. 
Franklin senior appears to have been a good deal scandalized 
at this proceeding, not so much that his son should hawk, 
but write ballads — rhyming and rags being inseparably con- 
nected with each other in the worthy man's mind, and he 
solemnly warned the young literary aspirant against indul- 
gence in such a beggar-breeding propensity, Benjamin's love 
of reading, meanwhile, continued unabated ; and in order to 
procure books, he offered his brother to board himself for 
7ialfth.e money, which his meals were reckoned to cost. This 
was readily agreed to, and thanks to the want of a distin- 
guishiug palate, as well as to the vegetarian doctrine he 
had derived from the perusal of a book by Mr. Tyan, who 
demonstrated to the lad's entire conviction the sinfulness and 
cruelty of killing and devouring beasts, birds, and fishes, 
which had quite as much right to live as their slayers and 
eaters, he saved a full moiety of the half-allowance paid him 
by his brother, and his library began sensibly to increase. 
At about the same time he formed an intimate acquaintance 
with a young man named Collins, a clerk in the post-office, 



FRANKLIN. 95 

and of congenial bookish and controversial taste and tem- 
perament, but not, as it subsequently proved, associated as 
with young Franklin, with sterling principle and habits of 
self-denial. 

In 1720, the elder brother ventured to start a newspaper, 
though strongly warned of the folly of such an undertaking 
by the wise greybeards of the city, who urged that America 
could never support two newspapers ; the one already 
established being quite, indeed more than sufficient to supply 
the political literature of that continent. The project was, 
however, persisted in, and the Boston Gazette nourished for a 
time reasonably well, the original matter being supplied by 
amateur writers, whose politics accorded with those of the 
paper, amongst whom Benjamin Franklin was eagerly desi- 
rous to try his 'prentice hand; but being quite aware that a 
prophet has little chance of honourable recognition by his 
own family, he disguised 'his hand, and slipped the paper 
containing his first leading article under the office door over- 
night, that being, it should seem, the ordinary mode of for- 
warding contributions to the editor. The paper was read, 
approved, and published, and thenceforth the writer became 
a regular, though still anonymous, contributor to the columns 
of the Boston Gazette, till an unlooked-for crisis in the journal's 
affairs entirely changed his position with regard to it. The 
House of Assembly took offence at some strictures inserted in 
the paper — the proprietor Avas arrested upon the warrant of 
Mr. Speaker — sentenced to one month's imprisonment, and 
ordered to discontinue the publication of his journal. This 
Napoleonic mode of dealing with the press, could only be 
evaded, it was thought, by publishing the paper in Benjamin 
Franklin's name, instead of that of the still real proprietor, 
and, in'order to guard against unpleasant contingencies, the 



96 EXTRAORDINARY MEET, 

lad's indentures were formally cancelled, the understanding 
being that this merely nominal release was not to affect, 
in the slightest degree, the mutual relations of the master 
and apprentice. 

A slight acquaintance with the rough side of human 
nature, even in its best samples, would have sufficed to fore- 
cast the consequences. The master, far from abating one 
jot of his authority, rather increased its weight, as if to 
assure himself that he had not parted with it, whilst the 
sense of legal enfranchisement simmering on the boy's brain, 
rendered him doubly impatient of his brother's peremptory 
and harsh control. Endless quarrels and bickerings ensued, 
in which the father usually, it appears, sided with the elder 
brother, and ultimately Benjamin resolutely broke with his 
brother, — sold his books, and with the proceeds, contrived, 
aided by his friend Collins, who represented to the master of 
a trading sloop that he was fleeing from the consequences of 
an imprudent amour, — to smuggle himself off to New York. 
He had not reached his 18th birth-day, when he cast himself 
thus foolishly upon the world, and after vainly seeking em- 
ployment in the last-named city, landed at Philadelphia, 
one hundred miles further south, after encountering various 
hardships in quest of the same object, with one dollar and a 
few copper coins in his pocket, — and moreover hungry, tired, 
dirty and miserable. It was Sunday morning, and his first 
care was to seek a baker's shop, where he purchased three 
penny loaves, — and as he strolled through the streets, 
munching one of them, and his pockets distended with dirty 
stockings and shirts, — his attention was immediately arrested 
by a Miss Read, who, standing at the door of her father's 
shop, eyed with a sort of compassionate curiosity the deso- 
late looking vagrant — the more conspicuous from contrast 



FRANKLIN. 



97 




with the passing streams of church and chapel attired, church 
and chapel seeking citizens, — profoundly unconscious, we may- 
be sure, that she was looking upon the individual whom it 
was written should be her future husband. Franklin at 
last found his way into a Quaker's meeting-house, the 
unbroken silence of which, to him, novel devotion, speedily 
lulled him to sleep, which continued undisturbed, till a rather 
rough shake by the shoulder, and the words, " It is time, 
friend, thou wert gone," made him aware that the morning 
service had concluded. He procured precarious employment 
for the time, with an original, of the name of Keymer, who 
refused to shave, in deference to the Mosaic injunction,— 



98 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

" Thou shalt not mar the corners of thy beard/' and as soon 
as might be, after the arrival of his box of clothes enabled 
him to make a decent appearance, sought for and obtained 
lodgings at the house where he had observed, on the first 
morning of his arrival in Philadelphia, a gentle female coun- 
tenance, not since forgotten. He very quickly obtained the 
good opinion of both the father and daughter, and many 
months had not elapsed, before it was tacitly understood that 
Miss Head was to be Mrs. Franklin, when the time arrived 
for prudently taking upon themselves the vows and liabilities 
of marriage. 

The young runaway had, moreover, the misfortune, as 
it proved, to attract the notice of Sir "William Keith, 
governor of the colony, and a man of some governmental 
talent, who was exceedingly fond of parading his patronage 
of promising young men. Franklin was invited to dine at 
an hotel once or twice, with his Excellency and Colonel 
French, vastly to the astonishment and admiration of 
Keymer and other Philadelphians to whom Sir William's 
character was unknown, and his Excellency vehemently 
insisted that a young man of such nice discretion and remark- 
able abilities ought to be established in business on his own 
account, without delay. He offered to write in this sense 
to his protege's father, and it was finally agreed that Ben- 
jamin Franklin should be the bearer of the flattering missive 
to Boston. The notice, highly-favourable opinion, and pro- 
fuse promises of substantial patronage of a gentleman in Sir 
W. Keith's official position, must have thrown Franklin's 
mind somewhat off its balance, or with his knowledge of his 
father's character, he would scarcely have undertaken such an 
entirely hopeless journey. An excusable feeling of vanity 
must, no doubt, have also aided in inducing him to visit 



FKJLN'KLltf. 99 

Boston, upon this occasion. He had left that city in a 
skulking disreputable manner, well-nigh destitute of money, 
and with a very doubtful prospect of procuring employment. 
He would return thither after a few months' absence only, — 
it was now only April, 1724, — with a diploma, so to speak, 
of ability and conduct from a baronet, holding high and 
official rank, — he had recently purchased a new suit of 
clothes and a silver watch, and had, moreover, thanks to his 
abstemious self-denying habits, six or seven pounds in his 
pocket ! The temptation, apart from any hope of inducing 
his father to establish him in business, was, in truth, irre- 
sistible I 

Sir William Keith's condescendent suggestions did not in 
the slightest degree dazzle or disturb Mr. Franklin s steady 
judgment. To saddle a youngster of eighteen with the cares 
and responsibilities of business, woidd be he pronounced utterly 
preposterous, and he would not trouble himself so much as to 
argue Sir William's proposition. At the same time he was 
pleased to find that his son had attracted the notice of so 
influential a personage as he naturally supposed the baronet 
to be, but in the same breath which enunciated his satisfac- 
tion in this respect, the cautious, solid-minded father emphati- 
cally impressed upon the young man, that if, as people seemed 
to suppose, he really did possess ability of a literary kind, he 
must be above all things careful to avoid lampooning and 
libelling, as utterly fatal to permauent success in life. Poetry 
or rhyming should also, he observed, be sedulously avoided by 
men desirous of making way in the world. The ostensible 
purpose of his journey thus peremptorily disposed of, 
Beujamin Franklin determined upon returning to Phila- 
delphia without loss of time ; but first paid a swaggering 
sort of visit to his brother's printing office, — dilated to the 



100 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

men there uj>on the higher wages and greater advantages in 
all respects obtainable at Philadelphia, and upon being asked 
for a trifle wherewith to drink his health, picked out a dollar 
from a handful of silver and tossed it with careless gracious- 
ness to the petitioners for drink. The brother, who was 
present and maintained a sullen silence whilst this boyish 
display was going on, complained bitterly to their father 
afterwards, that Benjamin had designedly insulted him before 
his workpeople. '-And you, who could do this," said 
Mr. Franklin, again addressing his younger son, " are, I have 
been assured, fit to be a master yourself. I have now less 
opinion than before of Sir William Keith's judgment, — and 
it was not previously a high one." 

"A man is taken by the words of his mouth," says the 
proverb, and this is especially true of words of vanity and 
boastfulness, as young Franklin was ere long fain to acknow- 
ledge in sorrow and bitterness. His glowing estimates of 
the superior advantages offered by Pennsylvania over Boston, 
to aspiring spirits, determined his old friend Collins to throw 
up his situation, sell his books, and accompany his governor- 
patronized friend to the not very distant land of promise. 
Possibly no other evil might have befallen Franklin from 
this imprudent step which his vain talk had induced Collins 
to adopt, than the annoyance, for a time, of a troublesome 
and not over-creditable companion, had not the vessel in 
which they embarked touched at Ehode Island, where Frank- 
lin's sea-faring brother had recently settled, in whose house 
they met with a Mr. Vernon, who requested Benjamin 
Franklin to receive a debt of thirty-five pounds, due to him 
from a person in Philadelphia, and remit it as soon as he 
could securely do so, but not before. Franklin received the 
money and put it by till he could forward it to Mr. Yernon 



FKANKLIN. 101 

by a safe hand. His own necessities, however urgent, would 
not, we may be sure, have tempted him to abuse the confi- 
dence of his brother's friend, but Collins, who held to him by 
the strong tie of former obligation, inasmuch as he had 
assisted him from Boston when he, for the first time, left that 
city, could find no employment, gradually abandoned himself 
to drink, and before he shipped himself off for the "West 
Indies, which he did at last, had borrowed, under vehement 
protestations of repayment before any inconvenience could be 
felt, a great part of Mr. Vernon's money. This was a sad 
affair; and Dr. Franklin frequently referred to it in after 
years as the chief error of his life. And one cannot help 
thinking, though he himself does not intimate so much, that 
the hourly dread of being peremptorily called upon to refund 
the money, induced him to lend a willing ear to the prepos- 
terous proposal of Sir William Keith, suggested no doubt by 
a desire to rid himself of the presence of a person to whom he 
had made promises he had neither the means nor the inten- 
tion of fulfilling, — that he, Franklin, should go himself to 
England, and purchase with the aid of the letters of credit 
with which Sir William would furnish him, the necessary 
presses, types, et cetera, for establishing himself as a printer in 
Philadelphia without his father's assistance. Surely but for 
an anxious desire of getting out of the way till he could repay 
Vernon's money, the young man's prompt reply would have 
been that the necessary materials could be procured from 
England with sufficient letters of credit, without the necessity 
of personally crossing and recrossing the Atlantic for that 
purpose. At all events he acquiesced in Sir William Keith's 
deliberately deceptive proposition, spite of the doubts sug- 
gested by Mr. Read, — the tearful misgivings of his fair 
daughter, and embarked for England, He had no sooner 



102 EXTRAORDINARY KEff. 

reached London than he found that the pretended letters of 
introduction and credit were not even written by Sir "William 
Keith j though had he written them they would not have 
"been one whit less worthless than as actually subscribed. 

Friendless, almost moneyless. — owing a considerable and 
Tery ugly debt, nearly four thousand miles distant from his 
home, from any body that knew or cared for him. he would 
seem to be in a position anything but favourable for a bold, 
hopeful effort after fortune. And yet, reader, from this 
moment, the young man whom we are now leaving as he 
enters in a fusiian jacket and apron the printing-office of 
Mr. Palmer, in Bartholomew-close, where he has fortunately 
obtained work, continued steadily to advance in wealth, 
knowledge, and worldly consideration — attained eminence in 
America, — became a distinguished member of the principal 
scientific societies of Europe, — earned for himself the some- 
what grandiloquent title of " playmate of the lightning," by 
his kite- experiment in proof of the identity of lightning with 
the electric fluid, artificially elicited on earth. — and is the 
same individual, then become stout, and somewhat gouty, 
his sense of taste having been for a long time previously cul- 
tivated to a power of delicate discernment — who in February, 
1778, was seen in one of the state apartments of Versailles, 
habited in a court suit of Manchester spotted velvet, and 
chairing with Louis XVI. and his ministers upon the con- 
sequences likely to accrue from the treaty of alliance offen- 
sive and defensive against Great Britain, which he had just 
concluded with France, and subscribed and sealed as the 
accredited ambassador and minister plenipotentiary of the 
United States. 

The historic image of Benjamin Franklin, does not so 
vividly impress the mind as the grander, more colossal 



fraxklix. 103 

figures which, instinct with the glory of brilliant genius, star- 
stud the vista of the dim past — but its paler, less dazzling 
light, is — we may be permitted to repeat — a more hopeful 
and cheering one to the masses of mankind, for it shines upon 
a path to eminence which it requires no seraph's wing, — no 
transcendant mental power — to oversweep or climb, — 
nothing but the qualities, prudently but courageously ex- 
ercised, which he himself possessed, — a clear intellect, — 
firm purpose, — self-denial, — energetic labour, — and perhaps 
the moral of his life is all the more pertinent and instructive, 
inasmuch that he stumbled heavily upon the threshold of his 
career, and recovered himself unaided save by God and his 
own brave honesty of will. 





MIRABEAXJ. 

npHE tumultuous and menacing scenes of French history 
■*- which closely followed the convocation of the States- 
general, reveal one lofty, commanding figure standing out in 
bold relief from the crowd of mediocrities which he dwarfs 
and shadows. That towering figure is Gabriel Honore 
Riquetti, count of Mirabeau, who by sheer force of an energetic 
intellect, sustained by indomitable will, — by immense power 
of life, is Madame de StaeTs expression, — dominated for a 
time the at last aroused and vengeful passions of a people, 
who for centuries had writhed hopelessly beneath the hoofe 
of one of the blindest, crudest tyrannies that ever afflicted 
humanity. So absolute appeared his sway over that fierce 
democracy, as to raise a hope that the unhappy monarch who, 
blameless himself, had succeeded to so vast a heritage of hate, 
might, if aided by the triumphant orator, — whose rampant 



MIKABEAU. 105 

democracy it was not very difficult to perceive, had but 
slight root in either his instincts or affections, — be successful 
in calming the popular hurricane by the sacrifice only of the 
despotic attributes of his hereditary crown, retaining as much 
of substantial authority as would suffice to rescue the people 
from the machinations of unscrupulous demagogues, and 
shield them from the consequences of their own excesses. 
An utterly absurd illusion tins no doubt appears to be, 
viewed by the light of subsequent events, but it was never- 
theless widely entertained at the time, and not' entirely 
dissipated, when upon the first hint that the eloquent tribune 
was disposed to further a reconcilement of the court and 
nation, the purveyors of news to the Paris populace, well 
appreciating the tastes for which they catered, made every 
street and lane of the capital vocal with their eagerly 
caught up and echoed announcement of u Grand traldson du 
Comte cle Mirabeau" against the as yet formally unproclaimed 
but not the less real sovereign populace. Death, sudden and 
unlooked-for, alone saved the previously popular idol from 
perishing in the revolutionary vortex, and moreover, by snatch- 
ing him from the theatre of his brilliant triumphs, before 
they had been sensibly dimmed by the shadow of a near and 
inevitable future, left his memory invested with a halo of 
success, winch but a few more weeks or months of life must 
have utterly dissipated. It may be said, indeed, that almost the 
entire fame of Mirabeau, as an orator and statesman,' has died 
into a tradition, surviving as it chiefly does in the echoes of 
the contemporaneous plaudits with which his harangues were 
greeted, — for assuredly the speeches and writings that have 
come down to us, very feebly vindicate the reputation which 
attaches to his name. Albeit that testimony, knowing as we 
do who some of his applauding contemporaries were, taken in 

H 



106 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

conjunction with the record of his youthful days, — tom r 
blotted, and imperfect as it is, suffices to evidence a mighty 
intellect, and a native nobleness of disposition, that under 
healthy guidance and example might have been attempered to 
pure and lofty issues, and have bequeathed to posterity a name 
precious alike to the lovers of the simply true and beautiful, 
and the more numerous idolators of commanding power and 
self-sustained supremacy. 

The Eiquettis were of Italian origin, and of patrician rank 
in Florence, where they resided till 1269, when Azza Eiquetti 
was banished with other leading Ghibellines from Tuscan y. 
Azza Eiquetti betook himself to Marseilles, purchased the 
Mirabeau estate in the Aucinity of that city, and took up his 
permanent residence there. The wealth brought by the 
family froni Italy, and the talents of its successive representa- 
tives in war, dijDloniacy, intrigue, and the kindred arts of 
sycophancy and dissimulation, which smooth the road to dis- 
tinction at absolute courts, not only forced itself into the 
ranks of the French noblesse, but managed to acquire great 
influence with the possessors of sovereign power, whether 
kings, mistresses, or ministers, and no one of them appears 
to have stood higher in court favour than Victor Mirabeau, 
the Friend of Man, and father of the Mirabeau, the memoir 
of whose early life is now before the reader. In the single 
article of lettres de cachet — royal licences to imprison 
obnoxious individuals at pleasure, — Victor, Count or Marquis 
de Mirabeau, obtained no less than fifty-four, at different 
times, of Louis the XYth., or of the royal mistresses. It is 
right, however, to state, that there were limits under the 
legitimate monarchy of France, to the issue of those delightful 
missives, even to a noble of such high standing as M. de 
Mirabeau; the last lettre de cachet which he applied for 



MIRABEAU. 107 

having been granted under protest by the minister, that as it 
was the fifty-fourth, there really could be no more granted, 
however unwilling his majesty might be to disoblige so loyal 
and distinguished an applicant. The title of Friend of Man 
was assumed by M. de Mirabeau, and confirmed by the 
philosophic savans of Paris, in virtue of his being the author 
of seventy or eighty volumes, entitled " Ephemerides" and 
" Legons Economiques" — a mass of dreary verbiage, for the 
most part foul as slime, weak as water-bubbles, in which all 
that is in any way clear is that, in the opinion of the Friend 
of Man, there is neither God nor heaven ; and the only hope, 
even on earth, for the especial object of the author's anxious 
friendship, is in the more economical arrangement and pro- 
visioning of the styes and troughs appropriated to the 
human animal. The publication of these consolatory and 
elevating disquisitions obtained for M. de Mirabeau, as they 
deserved to do, the friendship of Du Quesnay, the con- 
descendent patronage of Madame de Pompadour, and con- 
sequently enlarged privileges in the matter of lettres de 
cachet, and other influential court influence in affairs relative 
to his wife and son, of which it will be necessary presently 
to speak. 

The Friend of Man, in the gross or aggregate, had an un- 
conquerable dislike of women, as wives and daughters, yet being 
desirous withal of a male heir to his name and possessions, as 
well as of such additional wealth as an eligible bride might bring 
him, married the youthful Marie Genevieve de Yassen, Mar- 
quise de Saule-Bceuf, on the 9th of March, 1749, who brought 
him a dowry of 50,000 francs per annum. Shortly before 
this union he had purchased a small estate at Bignon, not 
far from Sens, where he domiciled his wife ; and for his own 
especial delectation he hired a large hotel in Paris, where he 

h2 



108 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

for the future chiefly resided with his mistress, Eleonore le 
Pailly, a handsome girl, previously a housemaid in the esta- 
blishment, who so enthralled the philosophic Friend of Man, 
that he was thenceforth a mere puppet in her hands, and she 
no doubt sedulously fanned the flame of demoniacal hatred 
which M. de Mirabeau socm came to entertain towards his 
wife and son. 

That son, Gabriel Honore de Biquetti, was bom on the 11th 
February, 1750, — a child with an immense head, twisted 
foot, two molar teeth, and tongue-tied. He early manifested 
intense energy, and when only a month old is said to have 
fought his nurse. At three years of age he caught a 
violent small-pox, and his mother, anxious to soothe the 
anguish of her child, plastered his face with quack ointments, 
the effects of which the father, in a letter to the boy's uncle, 
M. le Bailli Mirabeau, thus pithily describes : "Your nephew 
is as ugly as the devil." An utterly wretched household was 
that in which young Mirabeau was condemned to pass his 
boyhood. The cruelties, frequently extending to personal 
violence, suffered by his mother from her husband, the Friend 
of Man, gave rise to a mutually exasperating suit at law, 
which resulted, after fifteen years of litigation, in the courts 
being obliged, from very shame, patronized as M. de Mirabeau 
was in influential quarters, to pronounce the sentence of sepa- 
ration which the unhappy wife prayed for. As to his son, 
the sole half-contemptuous interest which M. de Mirabeau 
appeared to feel with respect to him was, that the " wolf's 
cub," his favourite paternal phrase, should become an econo- 
mist after his own fashion and example, for which purpose a 
M. Poisson was intrusted with his education. The boy proved 
singularly quick and apt at studies which harmonized with 
his own tastes and bent of mind, but stubbornly rebel- 



MIRABEAU. 109 

lious against being crammed with the Ephemerides and 
Economiques, so that he was very seldom out of punishment. 
A lad, however, of generous impulses, that would have greatly- 
repaid a wise and gentle training. It was dangerous, when 
he was five or six years old, to speak disrespectfully or slight- 
ingly of Madame de Mirabeau in his presence, it being certain 
that the weapon nearest at hand, whether a poker, candlestick, 
or glass bottle, would be instantly hurled at the head of the 
offender, whoever he or she might be. The boy also very 
frequently subjected himself to severe chastisement for pur- 
loining food and articles of clothing, to bestow upon starving 
and ragged wretches driven from his father's door, — not 
certainly commendable actions in themselves, but evincing 
native courage and generosity of mind. He was about nine, 
when he competed for a new hat in a riurning match upon 
the grounds of the Due de Nivernois, and won it easily 
against numerous and much older competitors. When the 
prize was handed to him he took his own hat, much the best 
of the two, and clapped it upon the bare head of an old man 
standing by, saying as he did so, " Here, friend, do you take 
this. I have only one head, and cannot therefore wear two 
hats." This act of boyish benevolence threw the Due de 
JSTivernois into an ecstasy of admiration. " Your son 
appeared to me at that moment," he wrote to the father, "to 
be the emperor of the world." Christianity — religion, rarely 
mentioned in young Mirabeau's hearing, except accompanied 
with a sneer, was, quite naturally, the butt of his earliest 
sarcasm, and numerous instances are related of his precocity 
in scepticism. He was "confirmed" at his mother's instance by 
a Cardinal, and a conversation which took place shortly after- 
wards curiously illustrates his fitness for the rite. A question 
arose as to what was possible or impossible, and the noble 



110 



EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 




and reverend company finally agreed that a stick with one 
end only was an impossibility. "And what, my lord 
Cardinal," exclaimed young Mirabeau, "is a miracle but a 
stick with only one end 1 " Poorly as this flippant remark 
speaks for the boy's logical acumen — Mirabeau, by the 
way, never became remarkable as a sequential reasoner — 
his brilliant firework declamation did not require and would 
in fact have been vexatiously damped and hampered by the 
necessities of logic ; — still the retort upon the Cardinal is 
quite decisive as to the character and quality of the fountain 
at which the nascent intellect of young Mirabeau drank of 
the knowledge of good and eviL 

At seventeen he quitted the unhappy domicile at Bignon 



MIRABEAU. Ill 

— home it could not be called — to study for the profession 
of arms in a military school at Paris, presided over by the Abbe 
Choquet. The dissipations of the capital engaged his time 
and attention much more than military studies, and chancing 
to lose forty louis at one coup in a gaming house, which debt 
of " honour " could not be liquidated without his father's 
assistance, he forthwith applied to that gentleman by letter 
for the required sum, delicately intimating at the same time 
that dispatch in the transmission of the money was desirable. 
M. de Mirabeau was of course furiously wrath at his son's 
culpable extravagance, and returned for answer that he 
would not advance him a sou. He added by way of post- 
scriptum, at the dictation of Mademoiselle le Pailly, that the 
next time such an application was made it would be replied 
to by a lettre de cachet, which would effectually bridle such 
licentious courses ! Ultimately the money was supplied by 
the imprudent gamester's mother; and after running the 
gauntlet, with more or less of good and evil fortune, through 
numerous amatory as well as pecuniary scrapes, Gabriel 
Honore Riquetti de Mirabeau was sent to join the regiment 
de Royal-Comtois, commanded by Colonel the Marquis of 
Lambert, as attache, under the name of Pierre Buffieres, his 
father remaining constant to the opinion that a "wolf's 
cub," incapable of appreciating the Ephemerides and Econo- 
miques, must inevitably bring scandal and disgrace upon the 
honoured names of Biquetti or Mirabeau, if permitted to 
assume either of them. The young attache's usual luck fol- 
lowed him to Saintes. The marquis-colonel of the regiment 
happened to be courting the pretty daughter of an archer 
there, and Pierre Buffieres, ugly as he was, had the insolent 
good fortune to supplant his commanding officer in the dam- 
sel's good graces. The colonel, to revenge himself upon the 



112 • EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

impertinent cadet, had his likeness cleverly caricatured and 
handed about amongst the officers of the regiment, a dastardly 
expedient which so exasperated Mirabeau that he fled to 
Paris, and sought refuge and protection of the Due de 
Nivernois. His request was refused, and he was forcibly 
sent back to Saintes, and there subjected to a short imprison- 
ment for breach of military discipline. Shortly after this, 
Mirabeau pere so effectually exerted his court influence as to 
get his detested son imprisoned in the isle of Rhe, with the 
firm intention, avowed to Bailli Mirabeau, of shipping him 
off at the first opportunity to Surinam, the most pestilential 
colony then known, in the hope " of never again beholding 
him upon the horizon." This fatherly project fell through. 
Young Mirabeau was liberated after a few months' confine- 
ment, and his first exploit after being set at liberty was to 
fight a duel with a man whom he met and quarrelled with 
in a cafe at Rochelle. He next served with his regiment 
during one campaign in Corsica, but becoming disgusted with 
the plundering, firing, massacreing incident to war, he quitted 
the service and returned to France. It was certainly from 
no deficiency in personal courage that Mirabeau's dislike of 
the military profession arose. His comrades, who had fre- 
quently seen him in action, upon being questioned as to his cha- 
racter and bearing, replied, " Why, he is a lad confoundedly 
active ; and then he has the wit of three hundred thousand 
devils, and is moreover a right brave fellow." His avowed 
reasons for abandoning the service were thus set forth : — 
" Regular, standing armies never have been and never will 
be good for anything but to establish and maintain absolute 
authority ; and as I am not one of those mercenaries who 
know only the person from whom they receive their pay, 
forgetting that pay comes from the people, and who fly at 



MIRABEAU. US 

the orders of hini whom they call roaster, not reflecting that 
they thereby risk reducing themselves from soldiers in 
uniform to servants in, livery — the service did not suit me.'* 
Bailli Mirabeau had meanwhile become much softened to- 
wards his nephew, of whom he emphatically pronounced — 
"that for wit the devil had not so much, and that he had the 
stuff for a naval or military commander — a pope — chancellor, 
anything he chose." The father and son, however, continued 
to regard each other with mutual hostility, and after suffering 
another and much longer imprisonment, young Mirabeau 
escaped beyond the jurisdiction of his father's illustrious 
patrons, and did not again come within the range of their 
power till a change of times in France enabled him to do so 
in safety. 

Mirabeau, the orator and statesman, was the natural deve- 
lopment of the youth Mirabeau, under the pre-cited con- 
ditions of education and example — which is saying that he 
was brilliant, impetuous, — bold to rashness, — swayed alter- 
nately by noble and unworthy impulses, — energetic, well- 
intentioned, and patriotic, — and destitute alike of convic- 
tions, of conscience, and of a distinct settled purpose. The 
factitious life which this eminent person derived from the 
noxious moral atmosphere in which he had the misfortune 
to be born and nurtured, animated and falsified his last 
moments. His death, of which so much admiration has been 
expressed, was self-evidently a show-scene, — a part studied 
and acted with a view to applause, — though to be heard only 
when the actor would be insensible to such incense, — a con- 
tingency of slight weight in such circumstances, inasmuch as 
it is impossible for a sentient being to realize his own anni- 
hilation. " Come and support the ablest head in France," 
he said to one of the by-standers. At another moment, 



114 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

looking towards the setting sun, he exclaimed, " If that is 
not God, it is his cousin-german." Then followed : — " That 
Pitt is a minister who makes war by .preparations : had I 
lived, I think I should have given him some trouble." Dr. 
Cabanis having informed him that all hope of life must be 
abandoned, he said, after the first tremor caused by the shock 
had subsided, " I shall die then, my friend, you say, to-day. 
Well, since I am at that point, there is but one course to 
take, which is to be perfumed, to be crowned, surrounded 
with flowers, in order to enter agreeably into the sleep from 
which there is no awaking." He then requested the phy- 
sicians, Cabanis and Petit, to hasten his end by opium, — 
poison in short, — none knowing better than he did, for his 
mind was perfectly clear to the last, that compliance with his 
wish, — law not having yet been abolished by the revo- 
lution, — would render them liable to an indictment for 
murder. Of course they declined, as he well knew they 
would, to place themselves in such a predicament, and he 
again and again repeated the request, — in writing, after he 
had become speechless, — his indomitable will enabling him 
to keep up the telling imposition of careless indifference to 
the last ! Solemn insincerities at such a time are surely very 
repulsive, whether prompted by the pride of religious fanati- 
cism, or the arrogance of bigoted unbelief. 

The tidings of Mirabeau's death rekindled his fast ex- 
piring popularity to a temporary flame. Presently a ru- 
mour flew from mouth to mouth, that the great orator's 
death had been hastened by the administering of opium, — : 
no matter that it was done at his own request, — and till 
the post-mortem examination of the body, instantly and 
clamorously demanded by the populace, had demonstrated the 
falsehood of the accusation, Drs. Cabanis and Petit looked 



MIRABEAU. 115 

exceedingly like popular candidates for the honours of the 
guillotine. 

Mirabeau was decreed a public funeral by acclamation. 
It was ordered that he should repose in the old church of 
Sainte Genevieve, by the side of Descartes, till the new one 
of the same name, to be especially revived and dedicated 
to the great men of France, by their grateful country, 
(Aux grands hommes la patrie reconnoissante), was ready to 
receive him. A magnificent cortege followed the body to 
St. Genevieve's, where it remained till the night of the 21st 
September, 1794, when, as if it was pre-doomed that the 
popular tribune's history should point a moral from even 
beyond the tomb, the coffin was rudely exhumed — carted oft 
by official ruffians, and flung into a hole in the cemetery 
of Sainte Catherine, in the faubourg St. Marcel, the 
burial-place of executed criminals — and left without a sign 
or mark to distinguish it from the surrounding felon- 
, graves. 





MOZAET. 



T IFE and melody were twin-born with this great com- 
-*-■ poser, grew together in infancy and youth, and to the 
last remained so inseparably intertwined and blended, that 
the hand of Death, untimely raised to strike down that still 
young and beauteous life, was accompanied as it fell by their 
mutual requiem, breathed forth in the prophetic, dying har- 
monies of the companion song-spirit. Almost invariably 
fatal to length of days is the precocious development of a 
great spiritual power, and marvellous as were the achieve- 
ments of Mozart, as a child and boy, one cannot but feel that 
such premature successes are dearly purchased by the sacrifice 
of a single day of the mature life of one whose ardent genius, 
if judiciously checked rather than unnaturally stimulated in 
his earlier years, would not, in all human probability, have 
so soon outworn its tenement of clay. 



MOZART. 117 

A certificate of baptism, subscribed by Leopold Compreeht, 
chaplain to his highness the Prince-Bishop of Salsbourgh, 
obtained at the instance of the Honourable Daines Bar- 
rington, F.B.S., in order to the clearing up of some niigivings 
entertained by that gentleman as to the real age of the boy- 
musician, then exhibiting (1764) in London, sets forth that 
" John Chrysostomus "Wolfgang Theophilus Mozart, the law- 
ful son of Leopold Mozart and of Anna Maria, his lawful wife, 
whose maiden name was Pertlen, was baptised in the afore- 
said city on the 17th of January, 1756, his godfather being 
Gottlieb Pergmayr, merchant of Salsbourg." This child was 
the seventh and last born of his parents, whose previous 
offspring, with the exception of one daughter, Anna Maria, 
four years Wolfgang's senior, died in their infancy. 

Leopold Mozart was second master of the Prince-Bishop's 
Chapel ( Vize Kapellmeister) and a musician of considerable 
local repute, both as a violin player and teacher of musical 
composition. He was a somewhat austere, — perhaps the 
j uster phrase might be a sternly- firm man, ruling his house- 
hold, wife included, with perfect equity, no doubt, and un- 
bending strictness. He had also a strong money-bias, not 
to say avarice, and was moreover a fervently religious man. 
Woferl and Mannerl, to use the household names of the 
brother and sister, inherited the temperament and disposition 
of their mother, — a very beautiful woman it is said. Woferl 
especially, from his earliest days, was one of the gentlest, 
most affectionate, loveable of children. Ever, as soon as he 
could lisp the words, his first impulse upon the entrance of 
strangers was to totter towards them, and ask with his 
beseeching eyes as earnestly as with his tongue if they loved 
him; — " Do you love me?" — and if the question was replied 
to coldly or indifferently, he instantly burst into tears. He 



118 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

was three years old when his father began teaching Mannerl 
the harpsichord, and at once throwing aside his playthings, 
he became entirely absorbed by his sister's lessons and prac- 
tice. Whenever he found himself alone, he eagerly ran over 
the keys of the instrument in search of " thirds," which when 
found, excited his boisterous glee. This went on for some 
months, till at last his father, half-jestingly, gave him some easy 
lessons on the harpsichord, — such as minuets, each of which, to 
the teacher's delighted amazement, Woferl perfectly acquired in 
about half an hour. The germ of a capacity for numbers was 
also displayed by the child at this early age, — the walls of 
his bed-room being repeatedly found covered with figures and 
calculations of some difficulty ; — it is quite possible, therefore/ 
that under other circumstances he might have become a 
superior mathematician. Leopold Mozart at length made 
aware of his son's extraordinary musical aptitude, took care 
that he should practise unremittingly at the harpsichord, 
with the avowed intention of exhibiting him, as early as 
might be, at the chief capitals of Europe. Till Woferl's 
sixth year, however, the father only recognised in his son 
a singularly fine and quick ear, and marvellous facility of 
execution; — the child's intellectual progress in the art, not 
manifesting itself till he was of that age, and then very 
startlingly. Woferl, who had received no instruction in 
musical composition, save what he might have gathered by 
listening to Leopold Mozart's teaching of others, conceived 
the idea of a concerto for the harpsichord, mentally elaborated 
it, and seizing a sheet of music paper when no one was 
present, forthwith began writing it out. In his eager flurry, 
Woferl plunged his pen every time it required refilling, up 
to the feather in the ink, and smudged out the huge blot 
which immediately fell on the paper, with his finger. Leo- 



MOZART. 



119 



:£'&& 



' 




2>old, accompanied by a friend, surprised the excited and 
impatient boy just before the stained and blotted manuscript 
was finished. " What are you writing and crying about, 
"Woferl?" asked the father. " A concerto for the harpsichord," 
replied the child, " but it is not quite finished, and so badly 
written." " A concerto for the harpsichord, you little 
monkey 1" replied Leopold Mozart, with a derisive laugh. 
" That is charming, upon my word. But come, let us see 
this wonderful concerto." The mocking smile upon the 
father's countenance changed to an expression of profound 
astonishment, as he slowly discerned through all the scratch- 
ings and blottings of the manuscript, not alone the idea of the 
concerto, but that it was written in strict accordance with 



120 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

the rules of composition, and faulty only in being exceedingly 
difficult of execution. From this moment Leopold Mozart 
no longer hesitated to challenge the admiration of courtly 
and influential circles in behalf of his prodigy of a son, and 
the spring of the same year, 1762, saw him, accompanied by 
both his children, — Mannerl herself being a superior per- 
former on the harpsichord, — at Munich, where they were 
kindly received by the Elector of Bavaria. This is about all 
that is known of the debut at Munich, and a few months 
afterwards they visited Vienna, carrying with them influen- 
tial introductions to the imperial court, in which distinguished 
circle little Woferl quickly became an admired favourite, 
thanks in a great degree to the partiality of the Emperor 
Francis I., and the Empress-dowager Maria Theresa, who 
appear to have been as much pleased with the amiable 
vivacity of the child as surprised by his precocious musical 
genius. An incident, trifling in itself, related of this visit, is 
worth reproducing, not only because it shows the favour in 
which " the little sorcerer," as he was usually called, was held 
at the Austrian court, but in being connected with a person- 
age whose tragic fortunes impart a touching interest to the 
slightest event of her life. Woferl, unaccustomed to the 
polished palace floors, fell down and hurt himself slightly, 
whilst crossing one of the apartments in company of the two 
arch-duchesses, daughters of Maria Theresa. One of the 
young ladies laughed and passed on, but the other helped 
Woferl upon his legs again, and gently consoled him for his 
mishap. " You are a good girl," said the little fellow, check- 
ing his tears, " and I should like to marry you when I am 
a man." " And to what, pray," said Maria Theresa, taking 
Woferl on. her knee the first time she saw him after this 
magnanimous declaration, " is the arch-duchess indebted for 



MOZART. 121 

the flattering wish you have expressed regarding her?" " To 
gratitude," replied WoferL " She helped and consoled me ; 
the other was too proud to do so." The sympathizing arch- 
duchess was Maria Antoinette, the martyred queen of France. 

Paris was the next capital city visited by the Mozarts, and 
there Woferl's success was, if possible, even more decided 
than at Yienna. M. Grimm, secretary to the Duke of Orleans, 
wrote with enthusiasm of his performances. " I was present," 
he says, " when the astonishing child was asked by a lady if 
he could accompany her in an Italian song, which she would 
sing from memoiy, without looking at her. The boy in- 
stantly seated himself at the piano, and accompanied the 
melody with almost entire precision, and on its repetition he 
played the air with his right hand and struck the bass with 
his left with undeviating exactness. The song was repeated 
some ten or a dozen times, and each time the accompani- 
ment varied in character." Both the children were much 
petted by Louis XY. and the queen of France, Woferl more 
particularly, who, upon one occasion, was permitted to eat 
off her majesty's plate whilst she translated his prattle to the 
king. The boy's affectionate kindliness of disposition, as dis- 
played in his perpetual " Do you love me!" was, however, 
rudely repulsed by Madame de Pompadour. " What !" cried 
Woferl, regarding the great lady with indignant surprise, 
" not kiss me, who have sat upon the knee and been kissed 
by an empress?" During this sojourn at Paris, Woferl com- 
posed four sonatas for the harpsichord, with ad libitum 
violin accompaniments: these were published as the work 
of " Joannes Wolfgang Mozart, Compositeur et Maitre de 
Musique, age de 7 ans." 

Guineas, albeit, in the estimation of Mozart senior, were 
much more desirable than mere glory, and in 176£, he arrived 

i 



122 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

with his children in London, the only place in continental 
opinion and experience where those desirable commodities are 
in sufficient quantity obtainable. George III. and Queen 
Charlotte warmly patronized the boy-musician ; and a suc- 
cession of profitable concerts^ extending over a space of a 
twelvemonth, amply realized Leopold Mozart's pecuniary 
anticipations, The Honourable Daines Barrington, amongst 
others, was so astonished at Woferl's performances, particu- 
larly his being able to play a manuscript duet at sight, that 
he, having first satisfied himself by the certificate of baptism, 
previously quoted, that Woferl was really only eight years 
old, sent a memoir entitled, " An account of a very remark- 
able Young Musician," to the Royal Society, by whom it was 
published in the sixtieth volume of the Philosophical Trans- 
actions. The testimony of Dr. Burney is of more value and 
authority. "Young Mozart's invention," says the Doctor^ 
" taste, modulation, and execution, in extemporaneous playing, 
were such as few professors attain at forty." The following 
incident reveals a higher capability than a power of facile 
execution : — One evening, in the presence of a considerable 
number of musical professors and others, Woferl took, at 
hap-hazard, a piece of music from a heap of the instrumental 
parts of some of Handel's songs. It chanced to be a bass, 
and with that guide only he at once recomposed the full 
piece, extemporising, at the same time, a charming and appro- 
priate melody. "The original melody," it is added, "the 
mature work of a great composer, would hardly have gained 
in comparison with the boy's instant improvisation. Bach, 
the younger, who happened to be present, was so overcome 
with admiration and surprise that he burst into tears, 
caught Woferl in his arms, and kissed him with passionate 
enthusiasm.'* 



MOZAKT. 123 

From England the traveller passed over to Holland at the 
pressing invitation of the sister of the Prince of Orange, 
where Woferl fell seriously ill ; the first overt indication 
of the fatal effect upon his health likely to ensue from 
such early and constant tension of the brain. Mannerl was 
also affected, but less severely, and thanks to the best medical 
skill and assiduous nursing, they were both after a while en- 
abled to resume their exhausting avocations. They gave two 
concerts at Amsterdam, in Lent, the apparent impropriety, 
in a religious sense, of such performances during that peni- 
tential season, being excused, according to the advertise- 
ments, inasmuch " that the marvellous faculties of the two 
children could only, in displaying themselves, tend to the 
glory of God by whom they were created." 

Soon after the return of the family to Salsbourgh, where 
they were welcomed with the noisy gratulations which ever 
attend those whom kings and queens delight to honour, a 
new surprise awaited Leopold Mozart, evincing, if reported 
with good faith, the possession of a large amount of secre- 
tiveness by Woferl, in addition to his other remarkable 
qualities. The anecdote is thus told : — Mozart senior, gave 
instructions in musical compositions to a violinist named 
Wenzl, who called one evening with six trios of his own 
writing to try over with his teacher. Wenzl was to play 
the first, Schactner, whom he had brought with him, the 
second violin, and Leopold Mozart the bass. They were about 
to commence, when Woferl offered to play the second violin, 
remarking that it required no teaching, nor much previous 
practice, to be enabled to do that. Leopold Mozart, angry 
at what he deemed an unbecoming pleasantry, ordered his 
son to leave the room. Presently, however, he readmitted 
him, at the request of his visitors, and told him he might, if 

i 2 



124 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

lie could, play a second violin, provided it was done so softly 
that no one could hear him. The trio began, and a dozen 
bars had hardly been played, when Schactner put down his 
violin in utter astonishment at the correctly beautiful play- 
ing of Woferl, who, it was asserted, had never received 
a lesson, nor himself studied this, the most difficult of 
all instruments. He next played first violin throughout 
the whole six trios, and though his fingering was of the 
oddest, the tone, time and expression were said to be perfect. 
We have also to remark that at about this period of his life 
Woferl must have completely conquered his antipathy to the 
trumpet, the sound of which, some years previously, almost 
threw him into convulsions, as before again leaving Salsbourg, 
he composed a duet for the violin and piano, with a trumpet 
obligato. 

In 1766, the Mozart s were again in Paris, and in the 
autumn of the following year, at Vienna, where a feeling of 
jealous ill-will on the part of the musical profession pre vailed 
to such an extent as to prevent the performance of an opera, 
" La Finta Simplice" which Woferl had composed, and other- 
wise so damaged his prestige and reputation, that his father 
bitterly complained of the entire loss in a money-sense, of 
their fourteen months' stay in the Austrian capital. A mass, 
however, composed at the Emperor's command, was performed 
at the Church of the Orphans, and was well received. The 
Mozarts made, during this visit, the acquaintance of Mesmer, 
the apostle of animal magnetism, by whom Woferl was 
warmly admired and patronized. 

Immediately on quitting Vienna, young Mozart earnestly 
addressed himself to the study of his art, as illustrated by the 
writings of the great Italian as well as German composers ; 
and in 1770 paid his first visit to the classic land of harmony 



MOZART. 125 

and song. Upon presenting himself before the Philharmonic 
Academy of Bologna, the President Martini said, in reply to 
his request of admission : " We have heard that you are a 
prodigy for your age, that you play the piano exceedingly 
well, and read at sight with facility. It is much ; but here 
more is required ; and I propose a question to you, in the 
form of a fugue theme." Woferl instantly rendered it with 
unhesitating accuracy — extemporizing all the developments 
of the fugue after the strictest rules. The tribunal was 
delighted, and the president warmly congratulated the young 
aspirant upon his success. Some time afterwards the Academy 
of Music at Naples gave him, as a test, a Roman Antiphon 
to arrange in four parts — he remaining the while locked up 
alone : in half an hour, the task was completed. About this 
time, a remarkable and frequently-quoted instance of his 
astonishing musical memory occurred. He arrived at Rome 
on the 11th of April, 1770, in Holy Week, and on the 
Wednesday went to the Sistine chapel, where he heard a 
Miserere by Allegri. It had been rigorously forbidden by 
superior authority to give or permit any one to take a copy 
of this piece, but Mozart, who was greatly struck therewith, 
brought the whole of it away in his brain, wrote it out imme- 
diately he reached home, and on the following Friday betook 
himself again to the chapel, with the score in his hat, to cor- 
rect any mistakes he might have made. Two days after- 
wards (Easter Sunday) he played the famous Miserere before 
Saloceti, the chapel-master, who could scarcely believe his 
eyes or ears — thoroughly assured as he was that no copy of 
the piece could by possibility have been obtained without his 
knowledge. Rightly to appreciate this astonishing act of 
memory, it is necessary to bear in mind that the Miserere con- 
sisted of twelve verses divided between two distinct choirs, — 



126 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

the first division being in five, the second in four parts, the 
whole intermingled with solos, &c., and sung alternately by 
the two choirs, which, at the last verse, joined — thus forming 
a composition of nine distinct parts ! On afterwards com- 
paring the original score with Mozart's transcript, not the 
slightest difference was found to exist. 

Mozart remained eighteen months in Italy — during which 
his reputation, both as an executionist and composer, steadily 
increased in brilliancy. His first acted opera, Mithridates, 
King of Pontus, was played twenty nights in succession at 
Milan, a success for which he was no doubt in some degree 
indebted to the splendid singing of the prima donna, Madame 
Bemasconi. Upon his return to Salsbourgh, the Prince-bishop 
conferred upon him the post of director of the orchestra 
(concei't-meister), and he remained at home, incessantly engaged 
in study and practice, till summoned, at the close of 1774, by 
his great patroness, the Empress Maria Theresa, to compose a 
serenade in celebration of the marriage of the Archduke Ferdi- 
nand with the Princess of Modena. The work was entirely suc- 
cessful; and when, on the 14th of January, 1775, the curtain 
fell upon L a Bella finta Guardinera, the show boy-life of Wolf- 
gang Mozart may be said to have finally terminated, and his 
brilliant manhood to commence — a brief, and, withal, a mourn- 
ful one, spite of that meteoric splendour, and though soothed 
and tranquillized by the affectionate solicitude of a beloved 
wife. The lamp of life, early excited to unnatural consuming 
brightness by the breath of courtly applause, nickered on 
till his thirty-fifth year only, and expired with the concluding 
accents of the magnificent strain of requiem which would 
alone suffice to stamp with immortality the name of Mozart. 




SIR S. ROMILLY. 



rpHE modest simplicity combined with a certain degree of 
-*- despondent pensiveness which characterises Sir Samuel 
Romilly could hardly have been more strikingly displayed 
than by the opening passage of his own Autobiography, 
which he there announces to be a brief memoir " of the life 
of one who never achieved anything memorable, who will 
probably leave no posterity, and the memory of which is 
therefore likely to survive him only till the last of a few 
remaining and affectionate friends shall have followed him to 
the grave." This was written in August, 1796, when he was 
in his fortieth year, about eighteen months previous to his 



128 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

marriage, and just as lie was entering upon the threshold, as 
it were, of the beneficent career which has shed a lustre upon 
his memory, daily becoming purer, clearer, brighter in that 
improved advancing public opinion, by which so many 
sparkling bubble reputations, contemporary with the less 
showy pretensions of the zealous and high-minded law- 
reformer, have been made to collapse and disappear. The 
anticipation of descending childless to the tomb proved as 
groundless as the fear that he would achieve no lasting 
memorial of his life. Like Benedict, when he said he should 
die a bachelor, he did not think he should live to be married 
— nor indeed " that there existed in the world such a woman 
as dear Anne Garbet," the eldest daughter of Mr. Garbet, of 
Knill Court, Herefordshire, "whom he had the supreme 
happiness of making his wife" on the 3rd of January, 1798. 
The bridegroom, having been born on the 1st of March, 1757, 
was, consequently approaching his forty-second year; but, 
comparatively late in life as that was to enter for the first 
time into the holy estate of matrimony, there can be no 
doubt that the union was on both sides one of disinterested, 
ardent affection. Sir Samuel, after several years of wedded 
life, penned the following testimony to the mental and 
personal attributes of Lady Romilly : — " The most excellent 
of wives; a woman in whom a strong understanding, the 
noblest and most elevated sentiments, and the most courageous 
virtue, are united to the warmest affection, and to the utmost 
delicacy of mind and tenderness of heart; and all these 
intellectual perfections are graced and adorned by the most 
splendid beauty that human eyes ever beheld." The catas- 
trophe of Sir Samuel Romilly's life gave proof, sad but incon- 
testable, that these expressions were not mere uxorious 
compliments — lip-flatteries — but the irrepressible swellings 



KOMILLY. 129 

forth of the concentrated tenderness of one of the gentlest, 
kindliest hearts that ever throbbed in mortal bosom — and 
one, too, that from his earliest to his latest years was ever 
tremulously sensitive to the still sad music of humanity, 
however fallen, sin-spotted, desecrated, might be the temple 
not made with hands, from which the plaint of sorrow or of 
suffering issued. 

Conscientiousness and amiability appear to have been here- 
ditary in Sir Samuel's family, and it would be difficult to 
point to a nobler descent than his, albeit he could only trace 
his ancestry as far back as his great grandfather, whose only 
son, moreover, kept a shop in Hoxton Old Town, London. 
The great grandfather was proprietor of a small estate near 
Montpellier, France, who having embraced the faith of the 
Reformation, continued with disloyal audacity to worship 
God after the manner approved of by his own conscience 
after the revocation of the Nantz Edict of Toleration by the 
Most Christian King Louis XIV.; but necessarily, — as he did 
not choose to expose himself to the pains and penalties 
devised by that just and pious monarch for the protection of 
Christianity, — in the seclusion of Iris own house, and the pre- 
sence of his family only. This covert protest against the 
right of the State to dictate laws to conscience did not suit 
the more impassioned temperament of the timid dissident's 
only son, who at the age of seventeen proceeded to Geneva 
for the sole purpose of receiving the sacrament according to 
the reformed ritual in the face of day. Whilst there, the 
young man's zeal was kindled to intensest name by the fiery 
eloquence of the celebrated Saurin, and forthwith determining 
to abandon home, kindred, country, inheritance, rather than 
crouch beneath the bondage ot spiritual despotism, he em- 
barked for England, where he had not long arrived when he 



130 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

commenced business in Hoxton Old Town as a wax-bleacher. 
He subsequently espoused Judith de Monsallier, the daughter 
of a French refugee like himself, whose sister, Elizabeth, mar- 
ried a Mr. Fludyer, and became, in the fulness of time, mother 
of Sir Samuel Fludyer, alderman and lord mayor of London, 
and moreover godfather to the distinguished subject of this 
memoir. The wax-bleaching concern was not a prosperous 
one ; chiefly because its proprietor was one of those facile- 
tempered, unsuspecting, generous men who cannot say "No," 
and who therefore never succeed in affairs which require the 
exercise of caution, distrust, and firmness. Still, the con- 
stant remittances which he received from France postponed 
the evil day of reckoning till after his father's death, and 
even then he might not only have rescued himself, which he 
would have thought a slight matter, — but his wife and eight 
children from the abyss of poverty, into which they must 
else be plunged by a formal recantation of the Protestant 
faith, the sole condition precedent to his being placed in legal 
possession of the paternal estate to which he was of course 
the direct and immediate heir. He refused to do so ; the 
property passed to the next of kin ; the disinherited son 
became bankrupt, and died not long afterwards of impo- 
verished circumstances, — a ruined home, and the anxieties 
attaching to a dependent family of four sons and four 
daughters, at the early age of forty-nine. His young- 
est son Joseph sank beneath the sorrow and despair caused 
by the death of his father, whom he soon followed to the 
grave. 

The wind is tempered to the shorn lamb, and friends were 
not wanting to the bereaved family. The remaining sons 
were Stephen, Isaac, and Peter, the last named of whom, the 
father of Sir Samuel Romilly, was bound apprentice to a 



ROMILLY. 131 

jeweller of the name of La Fosse, carrying on business in 
Broad Street, city of London. "Whilst serving his time he 
became attached to the sister of Garnault, a fellow apprentice, 
and like himself of French extraction. For a season the 
course of true love, contrary to ordinary experience, appeared 
to run smoothly enough in the direction of the marriage- 
haven, but presently it turned awry as usual, and as soon as 
his apprentice -term was concluded, Peter Romilly left England 
for France, worked for several years at his trade in Paris, 
visited Montpellier, and looked at the estate which the 
religious scruples of his father had handed over to a more 
orthodox proprietor, — returned to London, married Made- 
moiselle Garnault, with whose family he had become reconciled, 
and set up in business in the city as a master jeweller. His 
trade was a thriving one, as far as returns went, which 
ultimately reached as high as from twenty to thirty thousand 
pounds a year, but he had inherited his father's easiness of 
disposition, which, combined with the harassment consequent 
upon the continuous ill-health of Mrs. Romilly, and the death 
of five children in their infancy, led to an absorption of the 
profits, which, but for a fortunate windfall, to be presently 
further spoken of, might have had ruinous results. The sixth 
child, which did not pass away so early as its tiny predecessors, 
left a perennial tradition in the family of an angel child 
gifted with wondrous beauty and other extraordinary per- 
fections. Mr. Romilly used to awake her of a morning with 
the music of his flute, and the deep gloom which overcast his 
mind, when like the others she sank into the death-slumber 
from which no cunning melody of earth might rouse her, was 
only gradually lightened and dissipated by the subsequent 
births of three children, respectively christened Thomas, 
Catherine, and Samuel, who gave promise of more vigorous- 



132 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

life. That this fair promise might have the better chance of 
fulfilment, Mr. Romilly determined upon securing them the 
benefit of pure country air, for which purpose he took lodgings 
in the then rural suburb of Marylebone, whither the family 
accordingly removed. The result showed the wisdom of the 
expedient. Thomas, Catherine, and Samuel, who grew up to 
virile health, and even Mrs. Eomilly, spite of advanced years, 
rallied in the bracing atmosphere of High-street, Marylebone, 
— at a country-house wherein the family were in subsequent 
years permanently located. 

Maternal superintendence of the children had been neces- 
sarily, from Mrs. Bomilly's constant ill-health, confided to a 
Mrs. Margaret Facquier, a relative who had been domiciled 
with the family, from soon after the marriage of its master 
and mistress. Sir Samuel speaks of her with great respect, 
but not with the warm affection he expresses towards Mary 
Evans, a servant for whom when a child he seems to have 
felt an extraordinary attachment. ""I remember," he writes, 
"having frequently, unperceived by her, kissed the clothes 
she wore ;" and an intimation that she would probably leave 
the family to dwell with relatives of her own, threw him into 
an agony of affliction. It will be found that this feeling was 
ineradicable from a mind wonderfully tenacious of all early 
impressions, and not the less so when of a disturbing and 
painful character. An old woman employed occasionally 
about the house used to inflame his imagination and excite 
his fears by stories about witches, devils, and apparitions. 
" The images of terror," he wrote, when he was a barrister of 
long standing, "the images of terror with which those tales 
were filled, infested my imagination long after I had dis- 
carded all belief in the tales themselves, and in the notions 
on which they were built ; and even now, although I have 
been accustomed for many years to pass my evenings and 



ROMILLY. 133 

nights in solitude, and without even a servant sleeping in my 
chambers, I must with some shame confess that they are 
sometimes very unwelcome intruders upon my thoughts. I 
often recollect, and never without shuddering, a story which 
in my earliest childhood I overheard as I lay in bed, related 
by an old woman, of a servant murdering his master, and 
particularly that part of it where the murderer, with a knife 
in his hand, had crept in the dead of night to the side of 
the bed in which his master lay asleep, and when, as by a 
momentary compunction, he was hesitating before he executed 
his bloody purpose, he on a sudden heard a deep hollow voice 
whispering close to his ear * that he should accomplish his 
design ! ' But it was not merely such extravagant stories as 
this which disturbed my peace ; as terrible an impression 
was made upon me by relations of murders and acts of 
cruelty. The prints which I found in the Book of Martyrs, 
and the Newgate Calendar, have cost me many sleepless 
nights. My dreams, too, reproduced the hideous images 
which haunted my imagination by day. I thought myself 
present at executions, murders, and scenes of blood ; and I 
have often laid in bed agitated by my terrors, equally afraid 
of remaining awake in the dark, and of falling asleep to 
encounter the horrors of my dreams." Evil and distressing 
as were these frightful impressions as regards Sir Samuel 
Homilly himself, there can be no question that they must 
have stimulated in some degree, and perhaps unconsciously, 
his vehement efforts to purge the Euglish statutes of their 
bloody enactments ; and that consequently the abominable 
old woman, and the engravers of the detestable prints were 
so far, unwitting criminal law reformers. 

Samuel Romilly's school education was by no means of a 
superior kind. He was sent to a day-school kept by a French 
refugee of the name of Flach, whose only mode of inculcating 



134 



EXTRAORDINARY MEN*. 







i, . i i?, 







a love of knowledge appears to have been a remorseless use 
of the rod. A Scotchman of the name of Paterson, who kept 
a school in Bury-street, Saint James's, taught the brothers 
Latin, and so well and speedily did Samuel imagine himself 
to have mastered that language, that he was not yet sixteen 
when he determined upon favouring the world with a new 
and superior translation of Virgil, duly measured and rhymed 
into English poetry. When the important manuscript was 
tolerably advanced, the blushing candidate for poetical fame 
read the completed portions to Mrs. Facquier, his sister, 
brother, and Randolph Greenway, — of whom presently, — who 
unanimously pronounced his version to be far superior to that 



ROMILLY. 135 

of Dryden, and decisive, moreover, of the translator's power 
to produce a magnificent and original Epic poem. Sir Samuel 
incidentally remarks that he broke himself of his ardent love 
of rhyming before he reached his nineteenth year, having, it 
may be presumed, by that time ascertained that a facility for 
tagging rhymes together is no more an indication of poetic 
power, than successfully putting a company of soldiers 
through their drill is evidence of the possession of great 
military genius. 

Samuel Romilly finally left school at about the age of four- 
teen, and during the two following years was employed in his 
father's business; — very distasteful to him with his strong 
persuasion that he was capable of achieving a great name in 
the literature which was his constant solace and delight. 
He must, however, have devoted himself, in conjunction with 
his brother, to the jewellery trade, unless, indeed, he preferred 
a vacant stool, strongly pressed upon him, in his relative and 
godfather Sir Samuel Fludyer's counting house, had it not 
been for the sudden falling in of a legacy amounting in the 
gross to £15,000, bequeathed in varying portions to the family 
by Mr. De la Haye, a relative of Mrs. Romilly's. Thomas 
and Samuel were left £2000 each, their sister, Catherine, 
£3000, and £8000 to Mr. and Mrs. Romilly, and Mrs. 
Facquier, with remainder to the younger legatees in equal 
proportions. Samuel's two thousand pounds could not, 
it was thought, be turned to better account than by reserving 
it for the purchase of a sworn chancery clerkship in the office 
of the Six Clerks, an ancient confederacy entitled, in former 
good old times, by patent to plunder, almost ad libitum, the 
crazed or unfortunate people who voluntarily sought, or were 
ruthlessly dragged into the bottomless pit of Chancery. The 
indispensable preliminary to this investment in equity was 



136 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

to article Samuel Romilly to one of the sworn clerks, an 
arrangement carried into effect with little difficulty, and the 
young man became the pupil of Mr. Michael Lally, a worthy 
person it seems, though one of the Six Clerks. 

The necessary routine attendance for a few hours only in 
the day, did not much interfere with the home-avocations of 
the young clerk, — a home which, happily for his future fame, 
was peopled with gentle and elevating memories, companion- 
ships, examples, associations, and almost all of them more- 
over, tinged with a certain thoughtful sadness, as by the 
breath of mortality. The child whose seraph-beauty and 
perfections were a household reminiscence has been already 
spoken of, and Mr. Romilly himself, besides delightiDg 
in music, in the collection of fine prints and other illustra- 
tions of art within his means, was a man of a singularly 
benevolent and sympathizing disposition. One instance of his 
active and comprehensive charity may be quoted here, because 
establishing a remarkable resemblance between him and his 
celebrated son. He had noticed during several bitter winter 
evenings a wretched, lost creature, usually intoxicated, crouch- 
ing down with a child in her arms, upon the stone steps of his 
or of his neighbours' doors, and he felt it impossible to sit in 
peace in the light and warmth and cheerfulness of his own 
dwelling, whilst that outcast mother and her child were ex- 
posed to the inclemency of the" weather. It was useless to 
bestow money upon the miserable woman, which would be 
immediately squandered for drink, — and Mr. Romilly opened 
a negotiation with her, which resulted, not in saving the 
mother, that was past hoping for, but in permanently rescuing 
the unfortunate child from misery and ruin. The love with 
which this gentle-minded father was regarded by his children 
was of the tenderest kind,— in Samuel, filial affection was a 



ROMLLLY. 137 

passion. The dread knowledge of the grave brought by the 
passing years, affected him chiefly — himself being so young, 
and immortal as all boys practically, though not in theory, 
esteem themselves — as foreshadowing the death of his father; 
and one night when witnessing the representation of Zaire at 
Drury Lane Theatre, he suddenly burst into an ecstasy of grief 
and tears, which nothing that was passing on the stage, as 
those who know the play will easily understand, — had a ten- 
dency to excite, but simply because the thought flashed upon 
him that, at no distant day, his father's hair would be as 
white, his frame as feeble, as Lusignan's! Other softening, 
purifying influences had their dwelling place in the country- 
house at High-street, Marylebone, which became the perma- 
nent residence of the family, and Mr. Romilly's place of 
business, soon after the receipt of Mr. De la Haye's legacy. 
Two fair cousins, the orphan daughters of uncle Isaac, took 
shelter there, and the eldest, whose fascinating beauty and 
grace Sir Samuel writes of in a way which makes his long 
bachelorship perfectly comprehensible, — at once subjugated 
the heart of Thomas Romilly, to whom she was ultimately 
married. And there was developing itself the while in this 
charming family circle a tragic romance, which it is usually 
supposed exists only upon the shelves of circulating libraries- 
Randolph Greenway, of whom mention has been already made, 
was an apprentice of Mr. Romilly, but treated by the entire 
family upon a footing of perfect equality, and affectionate 
confidence. This young man conceived a vehement passion 
for Catherine Romilly, but of so reserved, so undemonstrative 
a temper was he, that no one suspected his secret, — unless it 
might be the young lady herself, who could hardly, one 
would suppose, have failed to divine it. Be this as it may, 
Randolph Greenway made one faint, awkward attempt at a 

K 



138 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

declaration, and finding that not responded to, relapsed into 
silence and despondency. A relative had bequeathed him 
five hundred a-year in landed property, permitting him to 
have done with business, and he invited Mr. Roniilly to visit 
him with his family, at his new residence in Oxfordshire. 
The invitation was accepted, and Mr. Roniilly congratulated 
him upon the appearance of his house, its fittings, furniture, 
et cetera. "Yes," replied the nervous lover, "yes, sir; it 
wants nothing but a mistress." Mr. Komilly not happening 
to comprehend or to follow up this very lucid revelation, Ran- 
dolph Greenway concluded that the proposition he imagined 
himself to have very plainly made was distasteful, and forbore 
to iterate it. This was an entirely erroneous conclusion in 
all respects, Catherine Romilly being at that time perfectly 
disengaged in her affections, and as she felt great esteem for 
the young man in common with her family, and the match 
being otherwise an eligible one, the probability was that if he 
had given his wishes intelligible expression, they would have 
been favourably received by both father and daughter. The 
favourable opportunity was, however, soon past. M. Roget, 
a young, amiable, and eloquent Genevese divine, who had 
recently succeeded to the vacant pulpit of the French Chapel, 
where the Romilly family usually worshipped, became 
attached to Catherine, by whom his addresses were accepted, 
and they were after no very long delay united in marriage. 
Before, however, the union took place, Randolph Green- 
way had revealed his passion to the brothers, though 
even then, in some sort, involuntarily. The three had 
been passing the evening at the house of a friend, and 
Greenway, it was noticed, drank an unusual quantity of 
wine, which, strangely enough, seemed to take no effect 
upon him, neither exhilarating his spirits, clouding his brain, 



ROMILLY. 139 

nor confusing his speech. He walked a part of the way 
homeward with the young Romillys, stopped suddenly, 
sank upon the step of a doorway, and as if a strong dam 
had given way, gave bursting utterance to the tumultuous 
agony of grief and despair by which he was convulsed and 
torn. Samuel Komilly was greatly surprised and shocked, 
and with his brother strove to sooth their terribly agitated 
friend, by suggesting that time has a balm for all such 
sorrows, acute as may be the temporary pain. It did not in 
this instance prove so. Greenway obtained a commission in 
the Oxfordshire militia, just then embodied, in the hope that 
military occupation might wean his mind from dwelling 
on the irredeemable past. A vain hope ! the commission 
was quickly thrown up ; the unfortunate gentleman hurried 
from place to place with the unpurposed speed and fury of a 
maniac, and it was not long before Samuel Romilly was 
summoned to the death-bed of his young friend at Calais, who 
was dying there, as it proved, of delirious fever, brought on 
by unrequited love for Catherine Romilly, — by that time 
Mrs. E.oget, and soon to be a widow. 

The foregoing incidents have been dwelt upon at greater 
length than they might otherwise have been, forasmuch 
as they tended unmistakably to form the just, sensitive, 
self-sacrificing character of one whom the world chiefly 
knows as the legislator, by the light of whose great example 
it has been long the pride and glory of more modern law- 
givers to walk and guide themselves. What else remains 
to be narrated of his youthful life-experience will not oc- 
cupy us long. He declined, upon the expiration of his 
articles with Mr. Michael Lally, to purchase a chancery 
clerkship, one reason being that he feared the withdrawal of 
the £2,000, necessary for doing so might have been inconve- 

k 2 



140 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

iiient to his father, in whose business it had been invested ; 
and another probably was, that the more active and high- 
reaching profession of a barrister had greater attractions for 
hhn, than the spider-like routine of a chancery parchment 
office. He was called to the bar by the Society of Gray's- 
Inn, and as he was early inclined to agree with Montes- 
quieu's estimate of the relative criminality of mankind when 
he says, — " II n'est si homme de bien, qu'il mette a l'examen 
toutes ses actions et toutes les pensees qui ne soit pendable 
dix fois dans sa vie," it is not surprising that the utterly bar- 
barous state of the English criminal law should have arrested 
his instant and fixed attention immediately he came prac- 
tically in contact with it. Not less absurd and ineffective 
than sanguinary and inhuman were those merciless decrees of 
death, — death equally to him who robbed a man of sixpence 
or of his life, — who stole his coat or polluted and murdered 
his child, — carried off a copper-kettle from his house, or fired 
it in the night, and burnt the sleeping inmates in their 
beds. That this cruel, heartless, indiscriminating barbarity 
no longer stains and encumbers the British statutes is mainly 
owing to the ceaseless, unwearied efforts of Sir Samuel 
Komilly, in days when to question the wisdom of our ances- 
tors, with reference to their blood-remedies for crime, was to 
encounter a mass of misrepresentation and obloquy which 
the present generation can form but a very inadequate 
conception of. Honoured be his name and memory. He 
Jias long since passed from the scene of his humanising, 
Christian labours, but his deeds survive, and form a chaplet 
of pure and changeless lustre, but the more invulnerable 
to the power of oblivion or decay for the cypress which 
mingles inextricably woven with the fadeless laurel and the 
palm ! 



KOiULLY. 141 

There is one circumstance, trifling in itself, perhaps, which 
so strongly illustrates the indelibility of Samuel Romilly's 
early recollections, — especially recollections of experienced 
kiodness, that it cannot be omitted, limited as our space may 
be. Mary Evans, his father's servant, married a man of the 
name of Bickers, and fell into needy circumstances. Appli- 
cation was made to young Mr. Romilly for pecuniary assist- 
ance, soon after he was called to the bar. As he could not 
afford to allow them an independent maintenance, effectual 
help in this way proved difficult, impossible, in fact, and the 
young barrister determined, though with much and natural 
reluctance, to employ Mary Evans' husband as his clerk ; and 
a very sorry, awkward, tormenting, almost useless clerk he, 
as Mr. Romilly anticipated, proved to be. He was invete- 
rately addicted to brandy, and when in his cups, which was 
not seldom, only more fluent than usual upon religious 
topics. He professed to be a Methodist, keeping Mr. 
Eomilly in a perpetual fever of anxiety when on circuit, lest 
the man should do or say something that would cover both 
himself and his master with ridicule, a catastrophe which, 
in a mitigated degree, was of frequent occurrence. Bickers, 
notwithstanding, kept his clerkship till he died. 




NELSON. 



UNDOUBTEDLY the most touching circumstance in 
connexion with the magnificent funeral of the Duke of 
Wellington, and one which will be freshly remembered when 
the gorgeous pageantry of the procession is forgotten, was, 
that the remains of the illustrious Field Marshal were borne 
in that imposing state to repose by the honouring and 
honoured dust of Nelson, — of the great Admiral upon whose 
pale brow the crowning wreath of victory had been placed by 
the consecrating hand of Death. That final companionship 
is not confined to the tombs of those true heroes. They are 
inseparably associated in the national mind, in equality of 
admiration and esteem, not perhaps in equality of sympathy, 
— of affection. It could hardly be so. The heroic sailor did 
not live to bask in the sunshine of the fame he had achieved 



NELSON. 143 

to wear during a prolonged and triumphant life the honours 
which his great deeds had won ; and for this reason, chiefly, 
it is that Nelson — Nelson dying at Trafalgar — the wasted, 
mutilated frame, the pallid death face crowned and circled by 
the glory of his last immortal signal — excites in the breasts of 
his countrymen a warmer, a more throbbing sympathy than 
even the illustrious soldier whose achievements are written as 
with a sunbeam upon the brilliant historic page which records 
the liberation of Europe from the iron thraldom of a conqueror, 
whose apeish shadow in the present day suffices to darken the 
future, and chills the hopes of the well-wishers to continental 
freedom and true progress. 

The very childhood of Nelson appeals to the sympathetic 
admiration of his countrymen. The fifth son and sixtli child 
of the Reverend Edmund Nelson, Rector of Burnham-Thorpe, 
Norfolk, and Catherine his wife, who in all had a family of 
eleven children, eight of whom survived their mother, the 
young Horatio, a weakly boy moreover, would have had but 
slight chance of writing his name upon the heroic annals 
of Ins country but for the compassionate generosity of his 
maternal uncle, Captain Suckling, R.N., who, upon the death 
of his sister, offered to provide for one of the boys she had left, 
as soon as he himself got appointed to a ship, and the selected 
youngster was ready to try his fortune at sea. 

Mrs. Nelson died in 1767, when Horatio, who was born on 
the 29th of September, 1758, was in his ninth year only, but 
he appears to have at once and instinctively appropriated 
Captain Suckling's offer, inasmuch that, upon reading in a 
county newspaper three years afterwards (1770) that Captain 
Suckling was appointed to the " Raisonnable," hastily fitting 
out at Chatham, for the purpose of assisting to bring Spain 
to reason in the matter of the Falkland Islands dispute, he 



144 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

instantly, and as a thing of course, asked his brother William, 
who was eighteen months his senior, to write immediately to 
their father, who happened to be at Bath at the time, in 
order that Captain Suckling might be informed without delay 
that his nephew Horatio, having reached the ripe maturity 
of 12 years, was ready to assist in doing battle against the 
Spaniards the moment he might be permitted to do so. The 
reply of Captain Suckling to the Reverend Mr. Nelson's 
intimation was a consenting, but not very complimentary one 
as regarded the future Admiral. u What," he wrote, "has 
poor Horatio done, who is so weak, that he above all the rest 
should be sent to rough it at sea 1 But let him come, and 
the first time we go into action a cannon ball may knock off 
his head and provide for him at once." This last paragraph 
was no doubt intended to deter the slight boy, whose ague- 
weakened frame Captain Suckling could only have observed, 
from encountering the hazards and hardships of a sea-life ; 
though anything less likely to shake Horatio Nelson's resolu- 
tion could hardly be imagined, and this the Uncle-Captain 
would have known had he been aware of the emulative, 
fearless, daring spirit of his feebly-framed nephew, ever 
prompting him to lead in all boyish enterprises that involved 
danger and promised distinction. 

The anecdotes which have come down to us relative to 
Nelson's school-days very faintly embody the characteristics 
of hardihood combined with gentleness, by which his boy- 
companions (amongst whom was Captain Manby, the in- 
ventor of the life-saving apparatus in cases of shipwreck) were 
universally and vividly impressed. They are, however, worth 
reproducing as indices, though slight ones, of the fire there- 
after destined to blaze forth in the avenging lightnings of the 
Nile, the Baltic, Trafalgar. When a mere child, he is said 



NELSON. 145 

to have stolen off birds'-nesting, in company with, a cow- 
boy, and great was the alarm of the family, chiefly from 
"knowing there were numerous gipsies in the neighbourhood, 
as hour after hour passed away in vain quest of the missing 
urchin. At last, he was found quietly seated on the bank of 
a stream which he could not cross. " I wonder," exclaimed 
his angry grandmamma, the moment she saw him, " I wonder 
fear, if not hunger, did not drive you home." " Fear, grand- 
mamma !" replied the child, " I never saw fear : who is he P 
It is right to mention, as the fact is with much emphasis 
insisted upon by Nelson's biographers, as if it could add a 
new ray to the admiral's glory, that this grandmamma was 
the eldest sister of Sir Robert Walpole, of ministerial memory, 
and that the second Lord Walpole was Horatio's sponsor at 
the baptismal font. But, to resume the early current of a 
life which created its own nobility : — The child's school, to 
which he was first sent was at Downham, and kept by a 
man of the name of Noakes, in the market-place of which 
quiet village young Nelson might be seen whenever opportu- 
nity offered, working away, in his little green coat, at the 
pump, till, by the help of his schoolfellows, a sufficient pond 
was made, upon which he delighted to launch paper-sail knife- 
cut ships, previously prepared for such experimental navi- 
gation. "William Patman, a shoemaker of the place, has 
given us an anecdote illustrative of the compassionate kindli- 
ness of Nelson's disposition. The shoemaker had a pet-lamb, 
which was accustomed to pass familiarly in and out of his 
shop ; Nelson had the misfortune to jam the animal between 
the door and the door-post, " and the little fellow's grief and 
lamentation," said Patman, " for the pain he had unwittingly 
inflicted, was excessive, and for a long time uncontrollable." 
When somewhat older, Horatio was sent with his brother 



146 



EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 




William to a more considerable school at North Walsham. 
It was there the pear-tree exploit occurred. There was, it 
appears, a fine-bearing pear-tree in the garden belonging to 
the establishment, the fruit of which had, from time imme- 
morial, to the present race of scholars, been the boys' lawful 
perquisites. One fine day, however, just as the fruit was 
ripening, it was announced that the pears were for the future 
to be kept sacred to the master's use and enjoyment. This 
arbitrary appropriation of the common property naturally 
excited the fierce, though suppressed indignation of the 
scholars ; and after much discussion upon the best mode of 
getting possession of the forbidden fruit, it was unanimously 
resolved that the only plan offering a chance of success was, 



NELSON. 147 

for one of the boys to be let down into the tree by a rope in 
the night, from the common bed-room window, which chanced 
to be rightly situated for the purpose, and, his mission accom- 
plished, of course quietly drawn up again with his full pear- 
sack. The scheme was an admirable one, only, as often 
happens with admirable schemes, an apparently insuperable 
difficulty, which nobody had thought of, presented itself at 
the very moment of execution. One after another, the entire 
council of juvenile plotters, after a nervous glance at the 
situation — that is, the outer darkness, the tree indistinctly 
visible far below, the slight dangling rope, of which the inner 
end was valiantly grasped by numerous volunteers for the 
task of letting anybody but themselves out of the window 
— declined the honour of the dangerous descent. After all 
had refused, Horatio Nelson, who had taken no previous 
interest in the matter, volunteered the venture, went out of 
the window with unhesitating alacrity, and slid safely down 
into the tree. The spoil was quickly secured, and the 
daring boy pulled, with considerable difficulty, safely up again 
with his booty. Nelson would have none of the pears, and 
said, as he jumped into bed again, " I only did it because you 
were all afraid to venture." 

The two Nelsons were still at this school, when a servant 
arrived, one cold and dark spring morning (1778), before 
either of them was up, with a summons for Horatio to join 
the " Raisonnable," off Chatham, forthwith. The else de- 
lighted boy's only grief was parting with his brother, but the 
tears of youth are quickly dried, and the young midshipman 
expectant accompanied his father to London in exuberant 
spirits. The Rev. Mr. Nelson, having so far convoyed 
his son to his destination, sent him on alone by the Chatham 
stage, by which he was in due time safely set down in that 



148 EXTRAOEDINARY MEN. 

ancient port. But the poor little fellow — he was in his 
twelfth year only — could not get taken off to the ship : — 
perhaps he had not been trusted with any money, or only 
after the fashion of Mrs. Primrose to her daughters, with a 
strict injunction not to spend it; and he was roaming about 
the quay, cold and disconsolate, when an officer who knew 
his uncle observed him, and having heard his story, gave 
him some refreshment and a boat-passage to the ship. Even 
there, his position was hardly mended. Captain Suckling 
was not on board ; nobody had heard that his nephew was 
expected to join the " Raisonnable," and " it was not," said 
Nelson, " till the second day, that somebody took compassion 
upon me I" 

Spain wisely settled the Falkland Islands controversy, with- 
out waiting for the arbitrement of line-of-battle ships, and 
after remaining a few months only in the " Raisonnable," 
Nelson, in order to advance himself in. the science of seaman- 
ship, entered on board an outward-bound merchant- vessel, 
commanded by Mr. John Rathbone, who had formerly served 
as a petty officer, under Captain Suckling, in the " Dread- 
nought." Mr. Rathbone was a disappointed man, who had 
contracted a virulent prejudice against the king's naval 
service, with which he contiived so thoroughly to inoculate 
young Nelson, that the lad upon his return to England mani- 
fested an utter detestation of the royal navy ; and a saying, 
popular at the time amongst seaman, " Aft the most honour, 
forward the better men," was often on his lips. The voyage 
had, at all events, greatly benefited him in one essential 
respect, having made him, according to his own and others' 
report, "a practical seaman" — sea-boy would be the fitter 
word ; and certainly not the least marvellous achievement of 
his career of marvels must be considered his attainment of 



NELSON. 149 

professional efficiency in so short a time, and at such an 
age. Captain Suckling received him on board the " Triumph/' 
of seventy- four guns, then a guard-ship in the Medway, and 
gradually reconciled him to the service by allowing him to go 
in the cutter and deck-boat, from Chatham to the Tower of 
London, and down the Swim to the North Foreland, and 
thereby practise himself in taki rig soundings and other boat- 
work, the knowledge of which greatly availed him in after 
life. Kelson remained in the " Triumph" about two years, 
the first fourteen months as captain's servant, the remainder 
of the time as a rated midshipman. Utterly weary, at last, 
of the monotonous uneventful duties of a guard-ship, he pre- 
vailed upon his uncle to solicit Captain Lutwidge, of the 
" Carcass," brig of war, to receive him as his coxswain, 
hoys being forbidden by an admiralty order to volunteer for 
service in the expedition to which the " Carcass" belonged, 
the destination of which was towards the North Pole, in the 
hope of realizing that ignus fatuus of navigation, a practical 
passage from the Arctic to the Pacific ocean. Captain 
Lutwidge acceded to his friend's request ; the " Racehorse" 
and "Carcass" sailed, and by the beginning of July, 1773, 
were frozen in at about latitude 79° 5CY and 9° 44' east 
longitude, amidst ice upwards of twelve feet in thickness. 
The efforts required to extricate the vessels, and the harassing 
and perilous duties incident thereto, brought young Nelsons 
hardihood, energy and resource into conspicuous play ; and 
upon one occasion, but for his prompt daring, when in 
command of one of the "Carcass's" boats, — a great charge 
for such a youngster, — in hastening to the rescue of the crew 
of one of the "Racehorse" boats, in imminent danger from 
the furious attack of a large number of enraged Walruses, 
some twenty of the " Racehorse's" crew would infallibly have 



150 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

lost the number of their mess. One night, as he was pacing 
the deck, at about mid-watch, of the still frozen-up 
" Carcass," a huge white bear, distinctly visible in the bright 
moonlight, trotted, a considerable distance off, past the ship. 
The temptation was irresistible; Nelson prevailed upon a 
young comrade to accompany him, and quietly arming them- 
selves with muskets, they slipped over the side, and were off 
in eager chase of Master Bruin. Presently a thick fog came 
on which completely hid the mad-cap adventurers from view, 
and Captain Lutwidge, upon being informed of what had 
happened, was not only angry but seriously alarmed for the 
boys' safety. About half-past three o'clock the fog rose, and 
they were seen in actual conflict with the bear, who, tired 
apparently of the dodging chase he had so long endured, 
seemed disposed to fight it out, there and then. Captain 
Lutwidge immediately signalled the boys to return; Nelson's 
comrade obeyed, and called upon him to do the same ; but 
orders to retire from danger were as little to his taste then 
as in after years, and he as coolly ignored Captain Lutwidge's 
signal as he subsequently did that of Admiral Hyde Parker. 
His musket had just flashed in the pan, and he was in the 
act of poising the weapon by the barrel, as he called out to 
his retreating friend, "O, never mind the signal. Let me 
only get a blow at this devil with the butt-end of the musket, 
and we shall have him." A fissure in the ice baffled the lad's 
effort to close with the enraged brute ; and fortunately so, or, 
slight and lathy as Nelson was, the bear might have break- 
fasted much more daintily than usual that morning. Captain 
Lutwidge, seeing the imminent peril the rash boy had placed 
himself in, caused a heavy gun to be fired, which frightened 
the bear, and he made off at his best speed; whereupon 
Nelson slowly, and with some misgivings anent his reception, 



NELSON. 151 

returned to the ship. " How dared you leave the ship with- 
out leave," demanded the angry captain, "and not return 
when I signalled you to do so 1 ?" " I wished to kill the bear 
that I might send the skin to my father," replied the future 
victor of the Nile. 

The prime object of the expedition having been perforce 
abandoned, the "Racehorse," to which Nelson was trans- 
ferred, sailed to the East Indies. During the voyage out, 
Captain Farmer rated him as midshipman, upon the recom- 
mendation of the master, who had noticed the sedulous, un- 
shrinking perseverance with which he kept watch and watch. 
He remained eighteen months knocking about from port to 
port, and station to station, in India, from Bengal to Bus- 
sorah ; and, reduced at last to a skeleton by incessant exertion 
and the deleterious effect of the climate, was invalided and 
sent home in the " Dolphin," Captain Sir Edward Hughes. 
At this period of his life a restless, morbid depression, almost 
despair, fastened upon and weighed down his ordinarily 
buoyant spirits. He feared that want of patronage in high 
quarters, in conjunction with an enfeebled frame, would 
prevent him from ever rising in the profession, and he was 
almost tempted to abandon it. Light at last broke through 
these gloomy fancies : he could at all events be a hero — 
serve his country zealously, even if unrewarded for that ser- 
vice, save by the proud consciousness of having rendered it. 
Prom the moment this thought burst, " a radiant orb was 
always suspended in his mind's eye," bright, as we now com- 
prehend, with the prophetic glory of the future, and the 
clouds of doubt and sinister foreboding exhaled and passed 
away for ever. After serving as acting second lieutenant in the 
" Worcester," 64 _guns, Captain Mark Kobinson, Nelson 
passed his examination on the 9th of April, 1777, for the 



152 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

grade of lieutenant. His uncle. Captain Suckling, was pre- 
sident of the tribunal, but did not mention bis relationship 
to the young officer till he had passed. " I did not wish the 
younker to be favoured," said Captain Suckling, in reply to 
an expression of surprise by one of the members of the board. 
" I felt assured that he would pass a good examination, and 
you see I have not been disappointed." The new lieutenant 
was appointed, on the following day, second of the " Lowes- 
toffe," of 32 guns, which frigate captured a few days after she 
was at sea an American letter of marque, but there was such 
a furious sea on, that the first lieutenant, who was sent to 
take possession of her, returned without having effected his 
object. " Have I no officer," angrily exclaimed Captain 
Lockyer, " who can board the prize V The master stepped 
forward, but was promptly stopped by Lieutenant Nelson. 
? It's my turn now, if you please : if / can't do it, it will be 
yours." Nelson did it, as it was certain that if not drowned 
in the attempt he would, albeit his first possession of the 
j>rize was very brief and unsatisfactory, the sea not only 
lifting the " Lowestoffe's " boat clean on board the letter of 
marque, but out of her again on the opposite side. After 
the " Lowestoffe " reached Jamaica, the duties of the frigate 
were much too slow for such a restless youngster as Nelson, 
— he had not yet attained his nineteenth birth-day, — and he 
obtained the command of the "Little Lucy," a schooner 
attached to the u Lowestoffe," in which he was very successful 
against the American privateers that infested those seas. 
He also served for a short spell as first lieutenant of the 
" Bristol," Admiral Sir Peter Parker's flag-ship, from which 
he was transferred (1778) to the command of the "Bagdad," 
brig of war, employed to protect the Bay of Honduras and 
the Mosquito shore from the Americans and their allies, a 



KELSON. 153 

duty which he very efficiently performed. The high estima- 
tion in which the youthful sailor was thus early held may be 
gathered from the fact that, in anticipation of a menaced 
attack upon Jamaica by an overwhelming French force 
assembled at St. Domingo, under Count d'Estaing, he was 
appointed to the command of Fort Charles, at Port-Royal, 
one of the most important of the island defences. Count 
d'Estaing, for some unexplained reason, did not attempt the 
threatened descent, and Nelson's jocular warning to his 
family, " that perhaps they would hear of his learning 
French," had no chance of realisation. 

The assigned limits of this memoir forbid us to follow this 
single and ardent-minded hero's career little farther 
than the ill-concerted, disastrous expedition to the Gulf 
of Mexico, in 1780. The purpose was to effect a settlement 
in Central America in the vicinity of the San Juan River 
and the great Lake of Nicaragua, by which it is fed. The 
San Juan is now ascended by light draught steamers, convey- 
ing passengers to the gold regions of California ; but in 1780, 
no European had attempted to pass up the river since the 
days of the Buccaneers ; and the concocters of the enter- 
prise were utterly ignorant of the locality, the nature of the 
climate, and of everything else essential in such a case to be 
known. The strict duty of Nelson, who commanded the 
" Hitchinbrook" sloop of war, was to assist at and protect 
the disembarkation of the troops ; but his fiery energy could 
not be confined within technical routine limits. He landed 
200 soldiers on the Island of Borromeo, at the mouth of the 
San Juan, in order to capture a fort there, — put himself at 
the head of his sailors, dashed headlong upon the fortifica- 
tion, lost both his shoes in the slimy mud by which it was sur- 
rounded, and as he said boarded the batteiy in his stockings, 

L 



154 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

and carried it before the military commander had settled in 
his own mind the proper mode of attack. This preliminary 
object effected, the next thing to be done was to ascend 
the river, and attack a castle numerously garrisoned by 
Spaniards, seventy miles from the mouth of the river, and about 
thirty from the Nicaraguan lake. The heat of the weather 
was intense, — the river consequently unusually shallow along 
many of its reaches, and it was frequently necessary to march 
through the matted forest, on the banks of the stream, 
swarming with venomous reptile life; the sailors dragging 
the boats after them. One poor fellow, bitten by a serpent, 
which leapt upon him as he passed beneath the branch of a 
tree, died in a few minutes, and was a mass of corruption 
before he could be removed. Nelson himself escaped a 
similar fate, by what the friendly Indians who accompa- 
nied the English force deemed to be a miraculous inter- 
position of Providence. He was sleeping in his hammock, 
which was slung between two trees, and just as day was 
breaking, an Indian observed a monitory lizard pass and 
repass over his face. The watcher instantly summoned one 
or two of his fellow Indians with a silent gesture ; the 
bed-clothes were lifted carefully off the still slumbering sailor. 
Closely nestled at his feet they found one of the deadliest 
serpents of South America, just in the act of awakening. 
It was killed ; and from that moment the Indians regarded 
Nelson as one who bore a charmed life. 

Arrived at the Spanish castle, Nelson's counsel was to as- 
sault and carry it at once, and he promised to do it in ten 
minutes, if he could have the command of the troops. His 
advice was rejected, the castle was invested according to rule, 
and ten precious days were wasted by his superior officer. 
In truth, according to the testimony of Captain Poison, of the 



XELSOX. 155 

60th regiment, the young naval officer was the life and soul 
of the enterprise. "I want words," wrote Captain Poison, 
the surviving officer in command, " to express the obligations 
I owe that gentleman ; he was the first in every service, 
whether by night or day. There was scarcely a gun fired 
but was pointed by him or Lieutenant Despard, the chief 
engineer." The Spaniard was easily enough mastered, not 
so the climate-pestilence, especially at that season of the 
year. The sailors and soldiers perished like sheep attacked 
by murrain. The " Hitchinbrook's" complement of men 
was 200, of these 87 were smitten down in one night, and of 
the whole 200, only ten ultimately survived ! The crews 
of the transports all died, and the ships drifted with the 
tide on shore ; in fact, out of 1800 men, of which the 
expedition was in all composed, only 380 returned to Ja- 
maica. Of these Nelson was one, an escape from else inevi- 
table death which he owed to being appointed in the place of 
Captain Glover, one of the victims, to the command of the 
" Janus" frigate, ordered to set sail immediately for Jamaica, 
with intelligence of the disastrous issue of the expedition. As 
it was, Nelson was carried on shore at Port Royal in a cot, 
and but for the kind nursing and attentions of Lady Parker 
whilst he remained there, and the anxious unwearying soli- 
citude of Captain Cornwallis, of the " Lion," by which ship 
he was sent home by Sir Peter Parker ; it was ever his 
own firm conviction that he could not have recovered. A 
few months' residence at Bath so far restored him to health, 
that he applied to be placed again in active service ; a re- 
quest immediately fulfilled by his appointment to the " Al- 
bemarle," a merchant ship captured from the French, and 
mounted with 28 guns, in which he was ordered, in his 
still delicate condition, upon a cruise to the North Sea. 



156 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

There was nothing to be effected in those latitudes, even 
if the " Albemarle" had been a ship worthy of her com- 
mander, instead of being so crank and over-masted, as to 
be perpetually upon the point of capsizing, and withal, so 
slow a tub, except when running before the wind, that 
Nelson used to declare her former owners had taught her 
by some art, which practice had made them perfect in, how 
to run away, and that only. This was in the days of the 
Armed Neutrality, and on the " Albemarle's" arrival off 
Elsineur, an official gentleman came on board to make formal 
inquiry as to the character, nationality, force, &c, of the ship. 
" This is the King of England's ship," curtly replied the 
yoimg captain, " and you can count her guns as you go -over 
the side." At his next visit to Elsineur there were other 
and more fatally significant questions to be asked and 
answered. 

The fratricidal struggle with America soon after terminated, 
and Nelson, in common with the great majority of England's 
sea officers, retired into comparative obscurity, till the war 
growing out of the French He volution recalled him to the 
service of his country. The deeds of the great Admiral in 
that Titanic contest are engraved upon the hearts of his 
countrymen and require no mention here, but the significance 
of the bright dawn of this great life would be but poorly and 
partially revealed unless there be permitted to fall upon it 
some rays of the sunset glory which it presaged and mirrored. 
The heroism of Nelson, it will have been remarked, was from 
his earliest youth the heroism of self-sacrifice, — of single- 
hearted, fervent, thoroughly unselfish devotion to his country: 
there was no alloy of caste, pride, or exclusiveness about it; 
and hence it came to pass, that his own ardent, glowing en- 
thusiasm kindled a like flame in the breasts of all who came 



NELSON. 157 

within the range of his great example — the cabin boy equally 
with the post captain, — so that at last the sole anxiety of his 
warfare, which when done oil was done, was to bring England, 
naval England, into close death-grips with her foes. Restless, 
angry, perturbed, sleepless, whilst this was doubtful, — whilst 
it was possible that the enemy of his nation might elude his 
search, avoid the combat ; no sooner did the near closing of 
the hostile fleets show that hand-to-hand decisive battle was 
inevitable, than the clouded eye brightened, the furrowed 
brow grew clear, and the previously disturbed and irate 
admiral became calm as infancy, confident as truth, — " took 
bread and anointed himself," had consideration for the deco- 
rations of his toilet, and the display of his ribbands, crosses, 
stars, — for was not his task achieved, and he, no longer a 
leader struggling with a foe, but the chief guest and spectator 
at an assured triumph of his country's arms, — the victor in a 
battle not yet recorded but already won? That this was 
true of Nelson no one can dispute, — more true of him than 
of any other man I at least have ever heard, or read of. 
Such men never die till the country which gave them birth 
has perished ; and we may, spite of alarmists and panic- 
mongers, confidently rely that Nelson's last signal flying from 
the mast-heads of the English battle-line in any future con- 
test, will be followed by a hurricane of fire that, with right 
on our side, shall wither up the mightiest force which the 
banded despots of the world could hope to array against the 
last, and it were impious to doubt, invulnerable bulwark of 
the liberties of Europe. 




ROBERT BURNS. 



rjlHE life-story of the peasant-poet of Scotland is one that 
-*- seldom fails to excite a painful sympathy in cultivated 
and generous minds, and astonishment, almost indignation is 
feit that the wealthy and influential of his contemporary 
countrymen should have looked on with indifference at the 
sad spectacle of a being so greatly gifted, treading with 
bleeding, lacerated feet, the rugged and thorny road of 
poverty from the cradle to the tomb, when so slight an 
exertion on their part would have raised him to a position of 
leisure, ease, and competence. This feeling, which we con- 
stantly hear expressed, is, no doubt, a natural and amiable 
one, and apparently assumes that a wayward, impassioned 



BURNS. 159 

child of impulse, might, by wise guidance and substantial 
help, have been transformed to a decorous, staid, well-to-do 
man of the world, without any fear that the ' light from 
heaven' by which he was unfortunately led astray would be 
thereby sensibly deadened or obscured, much less extinguished. 
Hardly so, we cannot help suspecting ; it is just possible that 
another unit might, by such charitable solicitude, have been 
added to the tens of thousands of forgotten respectabilities, 
of which there has never been any lack in Scotland or else- 
where, but not without mortal peril to the Robert Burns now 
dwelling with us in radiant, immortal life — the familiar and 
ennobling guest alike of the cottage and the palace. God is 
not so unregardful of his noblest creations as to place them 
where the mission for which he has especially and divinely 
gifted them could not be fulfilled, and we may be sure it was 
necessary to the full revealment of the powers of the mighty 
spirit-harp which we call Robert Burns, that it should be 
exposed to all impulses of soul and sense — the stern touch of 
poverty, — the maddening play of passion, — the indignant 
sweep of ireful scorn, ay, and the burning pulses of remorse. 
But that the chords were sometimes struck by the iron hand 
of adversity, — the lines to the Mountain Daisy, — the Mouse, 
— the ' Man's a Man for a' that,' would not, it may be feared, 
be now household harmonies in the dwellings of the Anglo- 
Saxon race ; the dainty touch of a decorous conventionalism 
could scarcely have elicited ' Holy Willie's Prayer,' and ' The 
Address to the De'il,' — from ease-loosened, dusty strings, and 
what but the fiery fingers of passionate, self-accusing grief 
could have produced the sobbing agony of the invocation to 
< Mary in Heaven !' 

Let us, therefore, instead of lamenting that Robert Burns 
was not changed into something else by a pension or other 



160 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

money-metempsychosis, and having regard to the poet- 
crown of stars, which diadems the brow of the immortal, 
rather than to the tattered and coarse apparel of the plough- 
man or the ganger, long since resolved, like the earth which 
he also once wore about him, to the elements, strive to ascer- 
tain in what respect his earlier hours of life preluded or gave 
promise of its brief but glorious day, — perfectly satisfied that 
in so doing we shall not render ourselves justly obnoxious 
to any charge of sentimental indifference towards the man 
Burns, inasmuch as nothing can be more certain than that 
if he himself could have had but one day's experience of the 
calm, decorous, prosperous, tideless life, many of his admirers 
think should have been assured to him, he would have flown 
back with eagerness to the sighs, the tears, the sorrows, joys, 
the tumultuous delights which have rendered him immortal. 
Nearly a century ago "William Burns, or Burness, the 
name is spelt both ways, originally from Kincardineshire, in 
the north of Scotland, afterwards of Edinburgh, settled down 
as a gardener, near Ayr, his last employer being Mr. Craw- 
ford, of Doon-Side. At Alloway, near the bridge of Doon, 
"William Burns rented about seven acres of laud, with the 
intention of folio wiug the business of a nurseryman, but first 
built a mud or clay cottage with his own hands thereon, 
consisting of one floor only, divided into two compartments 
— a sitting-room and kitchen, the bed place, an enclosed one, 
being in the latter division of the cottage. When it is said 
that this 'William Burns was the original of the patriarchal sire 
in the " Cotter's Saturday Night," though " his lyart haffets" 
(gray temples) were as yet un whitened by time and hardship, 
it is almost unnecessary to add that he was a high-principled, 
superior man, and moreover, writes his great son, " one who 
thoroughly understood men, their manners and their ways," 



BURNS. 161 

and remarkable "for stubborn, ungainly integrity, and un- 
governable irascibility of temper." William Burns had met 
Agnes Brown at Maybole fair, the daughter of a penurious 
Carrick farmer, but since his second marriage living, drudging 
rather, at her grandmother's. Agnes was at this time five or 
six and twenty years of age, and her pleasant manners, "fine 
complexion and beautiful dark eyes," effected such a sudden 
and decisive revolution in the mind of William Burns, who 
was some ten years her senior, that on his return home, he 
forthwith burnt a love-missive addressed, but not luckily 
forwarded, to another damsel, who had before slightly caught 
his fancy, and thenceforth became the avowed suitor of 
Agnes Brown. Her circumstances were humbler even than 
his own, and she had not received the slightest education in 
a school sense — she could not even read—but was withal 
rarely gifted with cheerful placidity of temper, housewifely, 
industrious habits, and a sweet voice for Scottish songs and 
ballads, which she sang with much feeling and taste. It was 
for the reception of Agnes Brown that William Burns had 
built his lime-washed cottage, to which he brought her, a 
newly- wedded bride, in December, 1757, and there was born, 
on the 25th of January, 1759, their eldest son, the now 
world-famous Bobert Burns — the first-born of a rather 
numerous family. 

Robert was not sent to school till he was in his sixth year, 
but the mind-nurture which influenced him through life 
began with the sweet ballad-strains, by which he was rocked 
to sleep in his mother's arms, and the warlock, ghost, fairy, 
dragon stories, and songs of an old woman of the name of 
Betty Davidson, a distant relative by marriage of Mrs. 
Burns, the impression made by which upon his childish 
imagination was never, he says, effaced. The poet resembled 



162 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

his father neither in temperament, taste, mode of thought, nor 
faith, but he was deeply indebted to him for a mechanical 
education — reading, writing, grammar — a slight knowledge 
of French, less of Latin, (but this was of his own procure- 
ment,) and some lessons in elementary mathematics — far 
superior as a whole to what is usually acquired by the 
children of parents in William Burns's rank of life. Robert 
first went to a small school about a mile distant from his 
home, and not long subsequently he and his brother Gilbert 
received instruction in reading, writing, and English grammar 
from a clever young teacher of the name of Murdoch, who 
had temporarily fixed his abode near them. 

In 1766 William Burns removed to Mount Oliphant, distant 
about two miles from his cottage, where he had taken the 
lease of a farm on such disadvantageous terms, — the wretched 
quality of the land considered, " the poorest soil in Scotland," 
writes Gilbert Burns, " I know of in a state of cultivation," 
— as to induce a doubt that he really understood men and 
their ways so perfectly as his son imagined he did. The 
twelve years which the family passed at Mount Oliphant was 
one ceaseless, bitter struggle for bare existence, which could 
hardly be obtained by the most strenuous and exhausting 
toil, frequently unsustained by a sufficiently generous diet, in 
which husband, wife, sons, and daughters were alike com- 
pelled to join. "My brother," says Gilbert, "at the age of 
thirteen, assisted in threshing the crop of corn, and at fifteen 
was the principal labourer on the farm, for we had no hired 
servant, male or female." During the last ten years of this 
painful period, the education of his children was superin- 
tended by William Burns himself, except when Robert and 
his brother were sent for one quarter, weeks about, to a 
school between two and three miles off, at Dalrymple, for 



BURNS. 163 

the improvement of their writing, and three weeks' tuition 
which the poet received from his former preceptor, Mr. John 
Murdoch, who had been recently appointed to a school at 
Ayr. These three weeks, if Mr. Murdoch's statement is to 
"be taken quite literally, effected a marvellous progress in 
Robert's education. The first week sufficed for " the revision 
of his English Grammar," and during the remaining two, 
Mr. Murdoch, who was himself, Gilbert says, learning French 
at the time, imparted that language with such success to his 
pupil, " that," writes the teacher, " about the second week of 
our studying the French language, we began to read a few of 
the adventures of Telemachus in Fenelon's own words." The 
duties of the harvest field deprived Mr. Murdoch of his " apt 
pupil and agreeable companion," but he did not immediately 
lose sight of him, as he frequently availed himself of the 
Saturday half-holiday to walk over to Mount Oliphant with 
one or two intellectual friends, in order to afford "good 
William Burns a mental feast," — Robert assisting thereat, — 
concocted, it would seem, in a very salad-like fashion, "of 
solid reasoning, sensible remark, and a due seasoning of jocu- 
larity, so nicely blended as to render it palatable to all 
parties." A very worthy man withal, Mr. John Murdoch, 
notwithstanding a natural spice of pedantry, appears to have 
been. " He was a principal means," says Gilbert, " of my 
brother's improvement, and continued for some years a re- 
spected and useful teacher at Ayr, till one evening that he 
had been overtaken in liquor he happened to speak somewhat 
disrespectfully of Dr. Dalrymple, the parish minister, who 
had not paid him that attention to which he thought him- 
self entitled. In Ayr he might as well have spoken blas- 
phemy, and he found it proper to give up his appointment." 
The frank-spoken Dominie proceeded to London, where he 



164 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

vegetated as a teacher of the French language, — Talleyrand, 
it is said, took lessons in English of him, — till the ripe age of 
seventy-seven. His memory, however, must, in some respects, 
have failed him long previously, inasmuch as his notice of the 
poet contains the following passage : " Gilbert always appeared 
to me to possess a more lively imagination, and to be more of 
the wit, than Robert. I attempted to teach them a little 
church music. Here they were left far behind by all the rest 
of the school. Robert's ear, in particular, was remarkably 
dull and his voice untunable." His voice untunable, it may 
be ; but Robert Burns's ear dull, and at the age of thirteen, is 
simply an impossibility. 

Mr. Robinson, a writing master of Ayr, and Mr. Murdoch's 
particular friend, " observing the facility," writes the 
younger brother, "with which Robert had acquired the 
French language, suggested that he should teach himself 
Latin," whereupon the poet purchased forthwith the rudi- 
ments of that tongue, and addressed himself to the task, alto- 
gether unsuccessfully • chiefly it seems, that the charming 
eye of Nelly Kilpatrick, his first sweetheart, just then began 
to initiate him in the rudiments of a more captivating 
language, — and Love and Latin proved, as frequently happens, 
irreconcileable. It will be necessary presently to revert to 
the earliest bulletin of Burns's master-passion, but first it 
will be well to refer to and sum up the poet's book- 
opportunities and acquirements. His father had, beside the 
ordinary school-books, procured, by loan or purchase, for his 
children's use, " Stackhouse's History of the Bible," a " Geo- 
graphical Grammar," " a Treatise on Physico-Theology," and 
another on the same subject, with a different title, " The 
Wonders of God in the Works of Creation." From other 
sources, Burns obtained at different periods, " The Spectator," 



BURNS. 165 

"Pope's Works/' a few of Shakspere's plays, some odd 
volumes of Kichardson's and Smollett's novels, " Locke on 
the Human Understanding," " Hervey's Meditations," "Allan 
Ramsay's "Works," " a Collection of English Sougs," a volume 
of "'Model-Letters," and several books of " Dogmatic The- 
ology," " Original Sin," &c. " Two other books," he himself 
says, " the first I ever read in private, were the ' Life of 
Hannibal,' and the 'Life of Sir William Wallace/ and 
they gave me more pleasure than any two books I have 
read since." The first, which was lent him by Mr. 
Murdoch, fired his young blood with military ardour, — 
the other, "the rhymed life of Sir William Wallace," 
which he obtained of the blacksmith who shod his father's 
horses, — Nelly Fitzpatrick's father, — left an impression 
on his mind which greatly influenced his poet-life, and 
may be traced in some of its highest inspirations. In this 
history, there are some lines referring to a circumstance in the 
life of the heroic chieftain, in connexion with Leglen Wood, 
Ayrshire : — 

" Syne to the Leglen wood when it was late 
To make a silent and a sure retreat." 

" I chose," says the poet, "a fine summer Sunday, the only 
day my life allowed, and walked half a dozen miles, to pay 
my respects to the Leglen Wood, with as much enthusiasm 
as ever pilgrim did to Loretto, and as I explored every den 
and dell where I could suppose my heroic countryman to 
have lodged, I recollect that my heart glowed with a wish to 
be able to make a song on him, in some measure equal to his 
merits." A bold aspiration, and plainly indicative of an 
instinctive consciousness of latent poetic genius, which, 
indeed, is rarely kindled to a flame, save by the love of 
country or of woman. In the instance of the Scottish poet, 



166 EXTHAOEDINARY MEN. 

both, influences combined to produce that result, and this 
brings us back to " Handsome Nell," whom, whilst his eyes 
were still wet and his pulse throbbing with sorrowful emo- 
tion for the fate of Scotland's martyred hero, he met in his 
father's harvest field, — and at once boy -love — 
" Warm, blushing, strong, 



Keen-shivering, shot his nerves along," 
associating itself with, and dominating the for a time feebler 
passion of the youthful patriot. " You know," wrote Burns, 
when in his 28th year, to Dr. Moore, "you know our country 
custom of coupling a man and woman together as partners in 
the labours of harvest. In my fifteenth autumn, my partner 
was a bewitching creature, who altogether unwittingly to 
herself initiated me in that delicious passion which I hold to 
be the first of human joys, our dearest blessing here below. 
* * * * How she caught the contagion I cannot tell, as I 
never expressly said I loved her : indeed, I did not know 
myself why I liked so much to loiter behind with her when 
returning in the evening from our labours, why the tones of 
her voice made my heart-strings thrill like an Eolian harp, 
and particularly why my pulse beat such a furious rattan 
when I looked and fingered over her little hand to pick out 
the cruel nettle-stings and thistles. Amongst her other love- 
inspiring qualities, she sang sweetly, and it was her favourite 
reel to which I attempted giving an embodied vehicle in 
rhyme." There are few of us who have not at one time of 
our lives felt this bewildering, poetic exaltation, though not 
with the same intensity as Burns, for young love is ever 
accompanied on his first visit with an Apollo, though usually 
a dumb one j and it is only upon more familiar acquaintance 
that he ever comes alone, or with Hymen shyly lurking 
behind in the distance. The nascent poet felt there was a 



BURXS. 167 

new heaven and a new earth opening npo-n him ; that the 
snn shone with a brighter glory, the silver stars shed down a 
purer, softer radiance, — the flowers exhaled more fragrant 
perfume, the birds a sweeter melody ; but expression was yet 
denied to the love-aroused poetic faculty, and all that even 
Robert Burns could do in the way of uttering " the wild 
enthusiasm of passion," to quote his own words, "which to 
this hour," he goes on to say, "I never recollect but my heart 
melts and my blood sallies at the remembrance, was a song 
of seven poor verses inscribed to Handsome Nell," of which 
the best is this — 

" As bonnie lasses I hae seen, 
And mony full as braw, 
But for a modest, gracefu' mien, 
The like I never saw." 

Handsome Nell was not however destined long to moDO- 
polise a heart that the slightest spark from a young woman's 
eyes would, at any time, set on fire with a new flame ; and 
in 1777 the Burns family removed from Mount Oliphant to 
a farm at Lochlea, — a distance of about ten miles, and a 
somewhat but not much more hopeful undertaking than that 
froin which the lapse of twelve wearing years had relieved 
them, the land being high-rented for the time, and William 
Burns, now prematurely aged and bowed down by severe 
labour and anxiety for his family, unpossessed of the means 
requisite for successfully farming one hundred and thirty acres 
of land. For a time, however, the family found themselves in 
easier circumstances, and the days and evenings of Robert Burns 
were passed in active, strenuous work on the farm, and in 
wooing in prose and verse, in all innocence, up to at least 
his 23rd year, every decent-looking maiden of the neigh- 
bourhood that would listen to him. Beauty in the damsel 



168 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

was not at all an indispensable requisite for calling forth the 
admiration of one whose imagination could discern — 

" Helen's beauty :"n a brow of Egypt." 

Neither did the maiden's rank, whether mistress or ser- 
vant, a farmer's daughter or his drudge, at all influence 
his affections. He would just as lieve walk half a dozen 
miles after work of an evening to court a farm servant lass, 
usually seated side by side, in a barn or other building, as he 
would the best dowered damsel in the county. The lover- 
poet, too, was by this time beginning to find his voice, not 
at once in great power and volume, but clear and melodious 
as a silver bell. Witness a few verses addressed about this 
time to " My Nannie O'," Nannie being, it may be fairly 
concluded, in opposition to some faint evidence to the con- 
trary, a generic name for the entire class of idols before 
whom he was everlastingly burning incense, rather than 
appropriate to only one especial divinity : — 

" The westlin wind blaws loud and shrill, 
The night's baith mirk and rainy 0, 
But I'll get my plaid, and out I'll steal, 
And owre the hills to Nannie 0. 

My Nannie's charming, sweet and young ; 
Nae artful wiles to win ye, ; 
May ill befa' the flattering tongue 
That wad beguile my Nannie 0. 

Her face is fair, her heart is true, 
As spotless as she's bonnie 0, 
The opening gowan wet wi' dew, 
Nae purer is than Xannie 0. 

A country lad is my degree, 
And few there be that ken me 0, 
But what care I how few they be ? 
I'm welcome aye to Nannie 0. 



BURNS. 169 

My riches a*s ray pennie fee, 
And I maun guide it cannie 0, 
But warld's gear ne'er troubles me, 
My thoughts are a' my Nannie 0." 

In his seventeenth year he attended a dancing school, in 
opposition, he states regretfully, to Mr. Bums' wishes, and to 
this act of disobedience he attributes " the sort of dislike" 
his father thenceforth manifested towards him, which was one 
cause of the dissipation which marked his succeeding years. 
This u dissipation" could only be so spoken of, when con- 
trasted with the rigid discipline and sobriety of Scottish 
country life in those days. His temper, moreover, was 
invariably kind and gentle, and if his brother Gilbert spoke 
with harshness to a youthful help on the farm within his 
hearing, he would instantly interfere with — " mon, ye're no 
for young folk," followed by some kind words in atonement 
for Gilbert's severity. At nineteen, Robert was sent to 
school at Kirkoswald, on the shore of the Firth of Clyde, 
kept by one Hugh Rodger, a teacher of geometry and land 
surveying. During his brief stay there, he mingled some- 
times with the rough smuggling gentry that infested the 
coast, and learnt to fill his glass, and mix without fear in a 
drunken squabble. His studies were brought suddenly to a 
close one fine day, by a fresh love-craze. This time it was 
Peggy Thomson, who lived next door to the school. Happen- 
ing to go into the garden at the back of the house about 
noon with a dial in his hand to take the sun's altitude, he 
encountered the far brighter eyes of that celestial maiden, by 
which he was incontinently struck with raving, but, as ever, 
temporary madness. " It was vain," he says, " to think of doing 
any more good at school. The remaining week I stayed, I did 
nothing but craze the faculties of my soul about her, or steal 

M 



170 



EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 




out to meet her, and the two last nights of my stay in the- 
country, had sleep been a mortal sin, the image of this modest 
and innocent girl had kept me guiltless." Fortunately he 
brought away from the shores of Clyde more durable impres- 
sions than Margaret Thomson's beauty imprinted on his 
brain; and amongst others, that of Douglas Graham, the- 
tenant of the farm at Shanter, and the original of that 
glorious " Tarn/' whose night-ride would have had such a 
disastrous termination but for noble Maggie, whose desperate 
leap across the brook — 



BURNS. 171 

" Brought off her master hale, 
But left behind her own gray tail." 

Robert Burns was now upon the verge of early manhood, 
and the story of his boy-youtli cannot be extended further 
than a brief glance at the prominent incidents of the imme- 
diately succeeding years may embrace. Some time after his 
return to Lochlea, he became attached to a young woman of 
the name of Ellison Begbie, the daughter of a small farmer, 
but at the time living as a servant with a family on the 
banks of the Cessnock. This young person he formally 
solicited in marriage through the medium of several laboured 
and entirely passionless letters, which one can only suppose 
Burns to have written, by dint of determinedly wrenching 
himself down to the dead level of the model-letters he had 
previously studied. Ellison Begbie refused the offer of the 
poet's hand ; for what precise reason does not appear, — but it 
was done, another dreadfully elaborate epistle acknowledges 
"in the politest language of refusal, — still it was peremp- 
tory; — you were sorry you could not make me a return, 
but you wish me, what without you I never can obtain, — you 
wish me all kind of happiness." Who could suppose now, 
that this freezingly-spasmodic tenderness was the composi- 
tion of a brain in which " Green grow the rashes O," was 
already sparkling into song? Burns by this time had become 
a freemason, and a " keen one" it is added, — an institution 
which would necessarily interest him greatly by its unsecta- 
rian, philanthropic character ; and his matrimonial penchant 
still continuing, he bethought himself of turning flax-dresser, 
in partnership with another person, at the sea-port town or 
village of Irvine, as affording a better chance of bettering 
his condition in the world than poorly-requited farm labour. 
The flax-dressing scheme, however, turned out ill, — Burns' 

m2 



172 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

partner, something very like a rascal, though the details are 
not given, and the poet suffered besides whilst at Irvine 
from nervous depression, — very severely so indeed, if some 
expressions in a letter to his father, dated " Irvine, Decem- 
ber 27th, 1781," are to betaken seriously: — "I am quite 
transported that ere long, very soon, I shall bid an eternal 
adieu to all the pains arid uneasinesses and disquietudes of 
this weary life, for I assure you I am heartily tired of it, and 
if I do not very much deceive myself, I would contentedly 
and gladly resign it." It is consolatory to be able to read 
this gloomy letter by the light of the burning flax-dressing 
establishment, which caught fire just four clear days after the 
epistle was penned, (January the 1st,) during a roystering 
carouse, of which the poet was of course the life and soul. In 
truth, Robert Burns was one of the most variable as well as 
impressionable of human beings, — sun-light and shadow, 
mirth and melancholy, smiles and tears, passed over and 
obscured or brightened the clear mirror of his soul with 
ceaseless rapidity, — nay, Mr. Hobert Chambers, the latest and 
by far the most successful of his editors, clearly shows, by an 
ingeniougly-woven chain of circumstances, that the " Ode 
to Mary in Heaven," and the bacchanalian song of the 
" "Whistle," were composed within a short period of each 
other ! 

On the 1 3th of February, 1784, the worthy, sorely-tried, 
brave "William. Burns died, "just saved," writes his son, 
u from the horrors of a jail by a consumption, which, after two 
years' promises, kindly stepped in and carried him away to 
where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are 
at rest." Bobert was in the death-chamber with his sister 
(afterwards Mrs. Begg) when his father expired. The dying- 
man strove to speak some words of consolation to his bitterly- 



BURNS. 178 

weeping daughter, mingled with warnings against sin, which 
come with such force from one — especially a parent — about 
to depart for ever. Presently, he added, that there was one 
of his children whose future conduct he was apprehensive of. 
This sentence was repeated, and the second time Robert, who 
was standing at some distance from the bed-side, heard it, 
and exclaimed in a broken voice, " Oh, Father, is it me you 
mean?" "Yes," was the reply, and the heart-stricken son 
turned away towards the window, sobbing convulsively in am 
agony of self-upbraiding grief. "William Burns, we may be 
permitted to say, with all reverence for a pure-minded, high- 
principled, long-suffering man, was scarcely fitted to pass 
judgment upon the failings or frailties of his greatly-gifted 
son. What these were in number and degree he might, 
indeed, compute with sufficient accuracy, but he could not 
estimate the force of the fervid impulses which in hundreds 
of instances had, in all probability, been successfully resisted. 
The manhood of the poet's life is chiefly written in his 
glorious songs, of which, up to this period, there had appeared. 
a few light sparkling gushes only. But his early years had 
been passed amidst the peasant-life of Scotland, which it was 
his mission to depict in all its varied lights and shadows, — its 
hardships, consolations, sufferings, joys — its sternly devotional 
spirit so apt to be abused by zealot-seeming hypocrites, its 
stubborn, enthusiastic patriotism, its self-sacrificing hardihood 
of endurance in any cause believed to be that of Bight 
and Justice. With every phase of Scottish country life 
and manners the youth of Burns being thus thoroughly 
familiar, he was enabled to fuse and mould them by the fire 
of his genius into immortal forms of truth and beauty. 
And he has had his reward in the highest, only guerdon 
which a true poet claims or values, — one which he doubtingly 



174 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

hoped for when the spirit of poesy first stirred within 

him: — 

" Even then a wish (I mind its power) — 
A wish that to my latest hour 

Shall strongly fill my breast ; 
That I for poor auld Scotland's sake 
Some useful plan or beuk could make, 
Or sing a song at least." 

A pious aspiration abundantly fulfilled, for not only in his 
more immediately native country, but in England, which, as 
regards Burns, may be called Southern Scotland, he has sung 
and will continue to sing the songs of the entire people, at 
merry-meetings, at lovers' trysts, at bridal feasts, at the 
partings and re-assemblage of friends; and there is one trumpet- 
lyric of his, needless to be named, which, though not printed 
in the army or navy lists, or set forth in any ordnance return, 
is nevertheless a greater and more effective national defence 
than many thousands of regimented men ; and would prove 
on the day, should it ever come, that Scotland or Scotland's 
queen were seriously menaced by foreign aggression, a wall 
of living fire around the land consecrated, defended, and 
glorified by the poet's genius. 




SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE. 

TN the winter evenings of 1775, a notable exhibition used 
-*- very frequently to take place in the large smoking room 
of the Black Blear Inn, Devizes, — always, if it was market- 
day evening, and the room consequently crowded with jolly- 
faced, lusty-looking agriculturists, comfortably enjoying them- 
selves over hot brandy and water, and the agreeable rise in 
prices occasioned by the war recently broken out with, the 
American colonies. At a sufficient pause or lull in the buzz 
of conversation, produced perhaps by a more than commonly 
emphatic opinion upon farming probabilities, or those 
attaching to the rebel Washington, — whether he would be 
shot, have his head chopped off in America, or be brought 
over sea to be hanged at Tyburn, — the landlord, a middle- 
aged genteel looking man, with a cleverish expression of face, 



176 



EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 




who had been fidgeting in and out of the room half a dozen 
times during the last quarter of an hour, would say with 
sudden decision : " ]STow, gentlemen, I will, if you please, 
introduce my son to your notice:" Before any answer could 
be returned, the door was thrown open, and a charming little 
boy, nicely attired, and about six years of age, waiting just 
outside with his mother or sister, caught up in the landlord's 
arms, and swiftly deposited upon a table reserved for that 
purpose at one end of the apartment. This done, the 
father usually went on to say, " Now, gentlemen, here's my 
son. "What do you say ? Shall he recite from the poets, or 
shall he take the portrait of either of you 1 Admirable in both 



LAWRENCE. 177 

capacities, I assure you, gentlemen, though it's not perhaps 
for me to say so." The most desirable as well as the most 
frequent response to this appeal, from the good-natured 
farmers who had not yet seen themselves framed and glazed 
in water colours, was an order for a portrait, which would 
only add two or three shillings to the drinking score, of not 
much moment, as prices ruled, — but if any one did make a 
request for poetry, "Lycidas" perhaps, a favourite piece of the 
child's, would be recited in the sweetest voice in the world, 
and with remarkable feeling and effect. A likeness he could 
dash off in a few minutes, and these displays were very 
profitable in a small way to the father-exhibitor. 

Well, reader, the sweet-voiced, bright-eyed, handsome little 
boy exposed upon a table in the smoking-room of a public- 
house, was he whose name heads this article — the future Sir 
Thomas Lawrence, president of the Hoyal Academy, and the 
most illustrious of modern portrait painters. It was only 
lately that his father had fallen so low in the world as to be 
compelled, as it were, to eke out the insufficient profits of his 
trade by such means. The young boy was born in Bristol on 
the 4th of May, 1769, within a stone's throw of Southey's 
birth-place, and was the youngest of a family of sixteen 
children, all of whom expired in their infancy save himself 
and two girls. His father, of the same baptismal name, 
Thomas, was about the most unsuitable man in England in 
the matter of a business or profession, inasmuch that educated 
as an attorney he had failed of success not only in the law, 
but as editor, poet, actor, declaimer, customs' officer, and 
farmer, all of which avocations he had tried in succession; 
and now the Black Bear, Devizes, famous to this day for 
keeping its owner well up in the world, was clearly incapable 
of resisting the downward tendency of Mr. Lawrence to the 



178 EXTRAORDINARY MEN". 

mire and slough of debt and insolvency. It was Destiny, he 
used to say; the fatal sisters were alone responsible for his 
embarrassments, in equity, though not, unfortunately, in law ; 
but be this as it may, Fate or Destiny had, at all events, at 
last awarded him compensation for any inevitable mishaps 
that might have befallen him, in the genius and filial love 
of his admirable son. There are few evils in the world that 
are not accompanied or followed by some degree of com- 
pensating good, and in this instance we shall find that the 
intense anxiety felt by Sir T. Lawrence from his earliest 
youth, to brighten the darkening future of his father, to pro- 
vide handsomely for his beloved mother and sisters, was, even 
more than the impulsive prompting of his genius, the spur 
which pricked him on to eminence, and enabled him to over- 
take and secure fortune. His mother's maiden name was Lucy 
Read, and she was, it is said, distantly related to the house 
of Powis. 

Young Lawrence, there can be no doubt whatever, was a 
very extraordinary boy. Garrick, when visiting the West 
of England, used to take pleasure in hearing him recite 
dramatic and other pieces, and repeatedly exclaimed after 
hearing him declaim a newly-learnt speech, "Bravely done, 
Tommy! Now which I wonder will you be, an actor or 
a painter?" This half-jocosely put question was a serious, 
much-meditated one for the boy himself, and was, we shall 
find, at last decided by a ruse of his father's, wisely no doubt, 
in contravention of his own wishes. Prince Hoare, also, who 
heard him recite " Lycidas" at Devizes, and saw eyes and hands 
of his drawing whilst there, spoke in the highest terms both 
of his declamatory and pictorial powers. Fuseli, indeed, 
declared that the eyes shown to him were equal to any of 
Titian's. The Honourable Mr. Barrington remarked as fol- 



LAWKENCE. 179 

lows upon the marvellous boy at Devizes : — " I cannot pass 
unnoticed a Master Lawrence at Devizes : this boy, who is 
not more than ten years and a half old (February, 1780), 
copies historical pictures in a masterly style. In seven 
minutes he took a likeness, and he reads blank verse exceed- 
ingly well." The sole aid in his art which Master Lawrence 
had yet received, with the exception of Rogers's "Lives of 
Foreign Painters," lent him by the Rev. Mr. Kent, with the 
benevolent purpose "of opening his mind," was a view he 
was permitted to have of the pictures at Corsham House, 
a seat of the Methuen family. His father, in reply to 
a friendly expostulation of the Rev. Mr. Kent's, to the effect 
that a son of such remarkable promise ought at any sacrifice 
to be placed under proper instructors, said, with a super- 
cilious smile, that " heritors of genius like his son, were their 
own best and all-sufficing instructors." This, it will be gleaned 
from one or two kindred instances, was not mere stupidity 
alone — a less excusable state of mind, in all likelihood, having 
prompted, partly at least, the absurd remark ; but Mr. 
Lawrence, at the same time condescendingly agreed that his 
son might perhaps learn something by a glance at the old 
masters. Master Lawrence consequently visited the Corsham 
House Gallery ; and his exclamation, when gazing upon a 
"Rubens" in the collection, "Ah! I shall never be able to 
paint like that !" was, perhaps the truest indication he had 
yet given of his power to attain rank in an art, perfection, or 
more correctly, eminence in which must assuredly be dis- 
cerned and appreciated before it can be approached, much 
less surpassed. True genius, however, is inflamed, excited, 
not dismayed, subdued, by its accurate perception of the dis- 
tance, great as that may be, intervening between its posses- 
sor and the goal to which he aspires ; it is the dullard and 



180 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

the impostor only who will have it that their little is the 
real lofty, their mediocrity true magnificence j and after 
sleeping over what he had seen, Master Lawrence set him- 
self manfully to reproduce, as well as he was able, the " Peter 
denying Christ," and other pictures he had been impressed 
with. His success in this entrance-hall, so to speak, to the 
vestibule of creative art, the Hon. Mr. Barrington, as we 
have seen, thought highly of. 

The enthusiastic boy-artist was about eleven years old only 
when his fathers final break-down at the Black Bear brought 
him into more prominent notice as the only available card 
left in the hands of that hapless player at the game of life. 
He was first taken by his father to Oxford, where his money- 
success as a portrait painter was unequivocal. Still more for- 
tunate than even that — his patrons were dignitaries, or other- 
wise in the first ranks of society, — a fact which precediDg him, 
and industriously blown about at Bath, opened every door to 
him in that city worth opening. His Bath success was a 
furore. Mr. Hoare gave him. private lessons in crayons for the 
honour of doing so : his charge for a likeness in water-colours or 
crayons rose quickly from one to two guineas, and even at that 
price there was no end to ladies, habited in the fashion of 
the day — a red jacket, with hat and feather, coming to sit to, 
and chat with the wonderful, and at the same time singularly 
handsome boy-painter. Sir Henry Harpur was so convinced 
of his artistical capabilities that he offered to advance a 
thousand pounds to enable him to study in Italy ; but Mr. 
Lawrence, the father, instantly decided against Sir Henry's 
proposition — repeating his former folly, that genius like his 
son's required neither models nor masters. The truth, no 
doubt was, that his real objection to Sir Henry's offer was, 
that its acceptance would necessarily deprive himself and 



LAWRENCE. 181 

family of the son's present, and, for an indefinite period, future 
earnings, and might not therefore be listened to. And his 
son had no wish that it should be entertained. His gains 
already enabled him to bring his mother to Bath, and sup- 
port her creditably there ; to place his sisters at excellent 
boarding schools — what then, to such a son and brother as 
Thomas Lawrence, had Italy to offer worth wishing for, at 
the risk, however slight, of perilling those present priceless 
blessings ! 

His oil-portrait of Mrs. Siddons as Zara, (Voltaire's 
Zaire) was engraved and much admired ; and altogether his 
fame lifted him so swiftly and triumphantly aloft, that his 
view presently embraced the London Society of Arts, to 
whom he sent a copy on glass of the Transfiguration. As, 
however, it had been finished two years previous to being 
sent, the society's rules precluded its exhibition, but to con- 
sole him in some degree for the disappointment, he was pre- 
sented with a silver palette and five guineas, as a testimony 
of the society's appreciation of his talents. This was abun- 
dant proof to everybody in Bath that London was impa- 
tiently awaiting his presence there, and thither it was finally 
determined he should proceed, but before the time for doing 
so arrived, a conflict arose in the young artist's mind — 
suggested in soni3 degree no doubt by the recollection of 
Garrick's encomiums — as to whether he might not succeed 
in the world even better as an actor than as a painter. The 
sums, it will be remembered, that Mrs. Siddons was receiving 
in those days were enormous, far beyond the scale of remune- 
ration that Thomas Lawrence could then have dreamed of 
ever obtaining by the help of his palette and pencils. This 
consideration, helped with a very exalted opinion of his own 
histrionic powers, must have weighed considerably with him, 



182 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

and it was fortunate his father perceived and comprehended 
the danger of the course his son was inclined to pursue, and 
took prompt and effective measures for knocking the half- 
matured project on the head. An arrangement was made 
with Bernard, an actor, and Palmer, the manager of the 
Bath company, the result of which was, that Bernard sug- 
gested a private, duet-sort of rehearsal of " Venice Preserved" 
to the young artist, who was to personate Jaffier, a part he 
greatly affected, whilst Bernard, holding the book in his hand, 
would be anybody — Belvidera, Priuli, Pierre — as occasion 
required, and prompter throughout. The rehearsal took 
place, as agreed ; and Jaffier went on very well till he says 
in a scene with Priuli — 

" I brought her — gave her to your despairing arms — 
Indeed you thanked me, but " 

— but — but — Jaffier stuck hopelessly at " but ;" the prompter 
wouldn't help him with a syllable, and for the life of him he 
couldn't remember what it was old Priuli did, or left undone 
after civilly thanking him; and amidst his stammering 
" buts," in bounced his father and Palmer, the Batb manager, 
laughing obstreperously, and both thoroughly agreed, a deci- 
sion presently endorsed by Bernard, that as an actor, he 
would never be worth his salt; " You play Jaffier, Tom!" cried 
his father ; " hang me if I think they'd let you murder a 
conspirator." The verdict being unanimous, and apparently 
honest, Master Lawrence resigned himself to forego his hope 
of Thespian honours, though with much doubting reluctance. 
" I still believe," were his concluding words, " that if I had 
kept well to study I might have succeeded on the stage, and I 
should then have been able to assist my family much earlier 
and more effectually than I have been able to do as yet." 



LA WHENCE. 183 

This thought, the well-being and advancement of his family 
— of his mother and sisters especially — would seem never to 
have been absent from his mind: it was perpetually casting up, 
whatever might be the subject matter of his conversation. 

Thomas Lawrence was seventeen when he arrived in 
London, and engaged handsome apartments in Leicester 
Fields. He had wisely taken Salisbury in his way, and his 
pockets were well lined with the sums he had levied upon all 
the Sarum folk that could afford to see themselves in crayons. 
A cursory survey of the state of his art in the metropolis, 
convinced him of ultimate success, and he immediately 
wrote to request his mother to leave Bath at once, and 
come to London. That she might not fear or hesitate to 
do so, he wrote, " Except Sir Joshua, for the painting of a 
head, i would risk my reputation against any other painter 
in London." His mother came, and on the 13th September, 
1787, he attended the Academy as a student for the first time, 
and by his drawings of the " Fighting Gladiator" and the 
" Apollo Belvidere," soon distanced in that branch of art, all 
competition. 

Some time afterwards, he waited upon the president, 
Sir Joshua Reynolds, with a portrait of himself, in oil. The 
president was, for the moment, engaged with another 
student, who was pertinaciously defending his work from the 
criticism of Sir Joshua. The president listened to the 
young man's vindication of his picture, with a raised brow 
and curling lip, and directly it was concluded, turned to the 
new comer with — " Now let me see what you have brought." 
" Ah," said Sir Joshua, after a minute and close inspection 
of the picture. " You think the sentiment fine, the colour 
natural, no doubt. You have been looking at the old 
masters, I see ; but I say study nature, young man, study 
nature." 



18 J: EXTRAORDINARY MEET. 

Whether this advice was unreservedly adopted, and suc- 
cessfully earned out by him to whom it was addressed or 
not, is beside the scope and purpose of this paper. Enough 
to record here that Thomas Lawrence became president of 
the Royal Academy, and the most celebrated, sought after, 
and highly remunerated portrait painter of modern times ; 
and that Sir Thomas Lawrence was as dutiful, tender and 
affectionate a son and brother as the handsome little boy first 
introduced to the reader upon a table in the farmers' smoking 
room at the Black Bear Inn, Devizes. 





WILKIE. 



rpHE diary of the Reverend David Y/ilkie, when minister 
-*- of the Kirk of Scotland at Cults, Fifeshire, contains a 
list of marriages, deaths and births, following each other in 
such swift succession as to read like a passage copied from the 
Registrar-General's book of doom. The reverend gentle- 
man's first wife was an aunt of the present Lord Chief Justice 
of the Court of Queen's Bench, his marriage with whom he 
thus records : " October 18, 1 7 7 G . Married this day to one of 
the most beautiful women in Fife, Mary Campbell, sister of 
George Campbell, one of the ministers of Cupar." Little 
more than three months had flitted past, when the bride 
was borne off by another and resistless wooer — Death ! 
" February 8th, 1777. This day my beloved wife departed 
this life ; ill of a fever attended by consumption ; an evil 



186 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

the most afflicting I have ever met with." Time, however, 
we find, was not long, with the assistance of Miss Peggy 
"Wilkie, in coming to the bereaved mourner's relief: — 
"November 3rd, 1778. This day married to Miss Peggy 
Wilkie, a third cousin, in Edinburgh." Again, and almost as 
speedily as before, the bridal flowers changed to a cypress 
wreath : — "March 28th, 1780. This day my most indulgent 
wife departed this life, after being delivered of a still-born 
child." Nothing dismayed by this matrimonial ill-fortune, 
and happily chancing to meet with a young damsel of equal 
courage, — young enough to be his daughter the gossips of 
Cults sneeringly whispered among themselves, — the reverend 
divine was again a suitor and a bridegroom : — " October 4th, 
1781. This day married to Miss Isabella Lister, daughter of 
Mr. James Lister, farmer, of Pitlessie Hill." And a very 
admirable wife Miss Isabella Lister, youthful as she might be, 
proved, making the bare one hundred pounds a year, which 
was all of earthly riches her husband possessed for the sustain- 
ment and nurture of the inmates of his manse, perform the 
ordinary work of two hundred : a precious wifely accomplish- 
ment, under almost any circumstances, but especially so when 
a household increases so rapidly as the Reverend Mr. Wilkie's 
now did, the following being the third birth entry in his 
diary : — "November 18th, 1785. This day, at about five in 
the evening, Bell was delivered of a son, who, on the 4th of 
December, was baptized David, after myself," A great 
announcement, though not so recognised till some twenty 
years afterwards, and quite sufficient of itself to overthrow 
Dr. Primsose's Monogamist theory, inasmuch that had not 
the Reverend Mr. Wilkie been of a totally opposite marriage- 
creed to that so vehemently maintained by the excellent 
Vicar of Wakefield, it is quite clear the world would still be 



WILKIE. 187 

without "The Village Politicians,"— "The Rent-Day;'— "The 
Chelsea Pensioners," — " Knox Preaching before the Lords of 
the Council," and other gems of art, which, once seen, are a 
life-treasure to the beholder. A dull, unpromising boy, this 
silent, reserved bringer of light from celestial fountains, was 
for a time, pronounced to be by the herd of observers, who 
have ever such stolid, unswerving faith in their own keen ac- 
curacy of vision, high above their sphere as may be the object 
towards which it is directed, albeit they can truly discern 
nothing even in the familiar material universe by which they 
are encompassed, save what the heritors of genius reveal to 
them in the poetry of words or colours. The Dominie of 
the parish-school at Pitlessie sorrowfully reported that David 
Wilkie was much fonder of drawing than of reading, could 
paint better than he could write, and, moreover, appeared 
quite incapable of mastering the subtleties of orthography 
and grammar. Whatever truth there might have been 
in these reproaches whilst David Wilkie remained under 
the tuition of James Ditson,it ceased quickly after his removal, 
in 1797, to the school at Kettle, presided over by Dr. 
Strachan, since Bishop of Toronto, as far as the acquirement 
of the ordinary school accomplishments were concerned, 
though his pictorial propensities continued to display them- 
selves, both in season and out of season, as freely as before. 
He would lie for hours upon the grass watching the play of 
the sunbeams, or by the margin of a stream drawing figures 
on the sand ; at other times appearing never to weary of 
gazing in at the door of a smithy, in eager observation of the 
flame-coloured interior, with its swart inmates, and bright, 
deep masses of light and shadow. His sketches of men, 
women, boys, girls, horses, dogs, in chalk, pencil, and ink, 
were innumerable, and drawn upon every possible surface — 

w 2 



188 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

floors, walls, doors, slates, books — anything, in fact, that 
happened to be near at hand, and available ; and it was early- 
noticed that beggars, soldiers, children at play, were especially 
favourite subjects with him. There was not a barefooted 
urchin in the parish school, whose likeness he had not 
taken; and often when Dr. Strachan was examining or lec- 
turing his attentive pupils, he would suddenly miss David 
Wilkie, who, struck by some humorous peculiarity of ex- 
pression in the face of a boy, or it might be in that of the 
master himself — for David was, in this particular, no respecter 
of persons — had dived down behind his school-fellows to 
transfer the impression, whilst it was yet vivid in his mind, 
to a slate or the margin of a printed book, if nothing better 
might be had. Nay, the very elders of the kirk, douce, 
honest men, could never be sure that when most abstracted 
from earthly thoughts and doings, they were not figuring 
irreverently in the fly-leaf of a service-book, or worse, being 
ink-drawn upon the panels of the school -pew, to the utter 
ruin of the pupils' gravity, and consequent scandal of the 
congregation. These rude portraits are said to have been 
striking as likenesses, not so much in accuracy of outline as 
in the successful portrayal of the character of the face at the 
particular moment indicated ; so that recognition of the truth- 
fulness of the delineation was usually accompanied by an ex- 
planatory remark, as — " Eh, but that's blate Jamie Andrews, 

in a swither about his lesson !" Or — "There's deaf Elder 

sure enough; singin' away after ither folk have done lang 
syne." Notwithstanding, however, that the nascent per- 
ceptive genius of young Wilkie fastened, with instinctive 
power, upon traits of humour and eccentricity, it was early 
manifest that its appreciative grasp reached loftier attributes 
of human character. Stories, for instance, of the Covenantal 



WILKIE. 189 

wars, with their heroic figures gloomily relieved against the 
dark, tumultuous back-ground, would at all times compel his 
rapt attention, stir his brain with emotions of pride, pity, 
grief and indignation, long after the telling of the tale was 
done, and quicken into life the spirit of historic painting 
strong if latent there. 

In addition to the artistic predispositions exhibited by 
David Wilkie, he simultaneously displayed remarkable mecha- 
nical aptitude, which might, perhaps, have developed into 
inventive genius but for the boy's stronger passion to become 
a painter, frequently busying himself as he did with new 
models for wind and water mills, machines for winnowing 
corn, and other contrivances of a like nature, so that when 
the time came for deciding upon his future walk in life, it 
was gravely doubted whether he might not be likelier to 
make a figure in the world as a machinist than a pictorial 
artist. Happily Mrs. Wilkie, in whose eyes her son's sketches 
were of course miracles of art, sympathised with his passionate 
ambition to become a great painter, and the Earl of Leven's 
good offices having been obtained for procuring him admission 
to the Trustees' Academy of Edinburgh, — an institution 
founded for the purpose of affording gratuitous instruction in 
drawing and painting to young men of promise, chiefly with 
a view to national progress in manufacturing design, — David 
was dispatched to the Scottish metropolis iti November 1799, 
armed with his portfolio of sketches and an introductory 
letter from Lord Leven to the secretary of the Academy, a 
Mr. George Thompson. This gentleman read the letter, and 
looked at the sketches, next very attentively at the candidate 
for participation in the privileges of the Academy, — a tall, 
thin, pale, raw, loutish-looking lad, in Mr. Thompson's 
judgment, — notwithstanding his keen blue eyes and certain 



190 



EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 






If 




lines of quiet humour about the mouth, the indications 
whereof the prosaic secretary was as blind to as to those of 
the sketches, in which he saw nothing but very incorrect 
drawing. He decided that the young man's application for 
admission to the Academy must be refused, and dismissed 
poor Wilkie with a positive intimation that he should reply 
in that sense to the Earl of Leven's letter. This was a 
terrible blow to the aspiring boy, who returned to his humble 
lodging in Nicholson- street, in a state of painful agitation, 
which however gradually subsided as confidence in the firm- 
ness of Lord Leven came back to his mind, who, he after a 
while felt sure from various circumstances anxiously recalled 



WILKIE. 191 

to memory, would prefer his own judgment to that of the 
secretary of the Academy, of which his lordship was the most 
influential patron and trustee. And so it proved ; the reply 
to Mr. Thompson's letter to the Earl being a peremptory 
order to admit David Wilkie as a pupil of the Academy 
forthwith, a direction which the secretary had no option hut 
to comply with. It was in reference to Lord Leven's decisive 
action upon this occasion, that Sir David Wilkie exclaimed 
in after life, in reply to some observation relative to the 
general evil effect of patronage in connexion with institutional 
facilities, — " Say nothing to me against patronage : it was 
patronage made me what I am!" An exaggeration no doubt, 
but clearly shewing the importance which the great painter 
attached to his having obtained admission to the Edinburgh 
Academy, — as well as his grateful remembrance of a long 
since conferred obligation. 

The master's chair at this time was filled by John Graham, 
who painted the death of General Frazer, — and one of the 
fellow-pupils of Wilkie was the late Sir William Allan, 
Limner to the Queen of Scotland, whose "Battle of Waterloo" 
hangs by the side of " The Chelsea Pensioners," at Apsley 
House. The resolute tenacity of Wilkie's character when 
applying himself to a cherished pursuit, was soon made 
evident. He had determined to do or die in his struggle for 
the painter's crown, and he permitted himself no respite from 
incessant toil, till he had thoroughly mastered the mechanics 
of his art, except it might be an hour to practise now and 
then on Ins violin, — or a brief communion with " The Gentle 
Shepherd," almost the only book except his Bible he ever 
opened. His progress was consequently very rapid, though a 
proof thereof, — a foot in red chalk copied from the antique, — 
which he sent to his father, was no wise so considered by the 



192 EXTRAORDINARY WES. 

good folk of Cults, who, spite of the wilful youth's irreverent 
practice of sketching ministers and elders at times when they 
were thinking of any thing else than sitting or standing 
for their portraits, were always speering for news of "our 
Davie." " That a foot !" exclaimed the spokesman of a knot 
of village cognoscenti, after a lengthened examination of the 
red chalk drawing — " That a foot ! It's mair like a fluke than 
a foot;" and it appeared to be generally agreed that the 
Edinbro' bodies were misguiding the lad instead of helping 
him forward in his studies. The first academical distinction 
for which Wilkie competed, was offered for the best pictorial . 
embodiment of certain scenes in Macbeth; and though he 
missed the prize, his head of Lady Macduff's son was greatly 
praised. But genius, strengthened by labour and courage, is 
sure sooner or later to overtake success, and in 1803, David 
"Wilkie triumphantly carried off the chief prize — ten guineas — 
offered by the Academy by his " Calisto at the Bath of Diana;" 
the first rough outline of which obtained at the sale of the 
deceased artist's sketches the sum of forty-six pounds seven 
shillings. Having acquired all the knowledge obtainable at 
the Edinburgh Academy, "Wilkie, in 1804, returned to Cults, 
and abode for a time at his father's house, but not allowing, 
if he could help it, a single day to pass without adding some- 
thing to his artistic treasures, — village folk on their reverent 
way to kirk on the sabbath morn, — a group of disputatious 
polemics canvassing the merits of the sermon between the 
services, — or the more varied scenes presented by Pitlessie 
fair, and the like haunts of rural revelry. He obtained 
considerable local patronage, but at length the enthusiastic 
prophecies of friends aiding his own strong consciousness 
of artistic power, he determined upon proceeding to London, 
and measuring himself with the Athletse who had already 



WILKIE. 193 

won fame and fortune in that decisive arena. He arrived 
in London on the 20th of May, 1805, at the age of about 
nineteen years and six months, with two or three letters of 
introduction, and a very small sum of money in his pockets ; 
but rich in capacity and willingness for perseverant toil, — the 
disciplined cunning of his hand, and, as it speedily proved, 
numerous delightful images of life, sparkling in his brain. 
He first took lodgings in Aldgate, but a few hours' experience 
of London sufficed to convince him that he had not located 
himself in a very eligible quarter of the metropolis, and he 
removed with as little delay as possible to No. 8, Norton- 
street, Portland-row; in a little back room of which house 
the obscure, unfriended artist set resolutely to work, and 
presently " The Tillage Politicians " grew into life beneath 
his creative fingers. Lord Mansfield saw the picture before 
completion, and agreed to purchase it for fifteen guineas, 
Wilkie reserving the right to send it . for exhibition to the 
Koyal Academy previous to its passing into his lordship's 
possession. This, in a pecuniary point of view, was an im- 
provident bargain on Wilkie's part, two persons having 
subsequently offered him much larger sums for the picture — 
one of them ultimately bidding as high as one hundred 
pounds. Greatly vexed at having given away his picture, 
as it now appeared that he had, Wilkie informed Lord 
Mansfield of the offers made to him; whereupon his lordship, 
first insisting that it should be acknowledged the bargain was 
a legal and binding one, voluntarily doubled the price he had 
agreed for, and gave Wilkie a cheque for thirty guineas. 

The exhibition of " The Village Politicians" was a veritable 
triumph for the young painter. His diligently-cultivated 
powers had enabled him to reach the front rank of his profes- 
sion at a single bound, and thenceforth his artist-life was a 



194 



EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 



continuous success, — embellished by fortune, rank, royal and 
aristocratic countenance and favour — until premature decay, 
ending in the burial at sea, pointed, as in every other life- 
catastrophe, the moral of all human tales, — the nothingness, 
the vanity of human existence, but for the promised immor- 
tality which a lofty genius may be said to prefigure and 
anticipate on earth. 





NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 



THE youth of Napoleon Bonaparte must ever be an inte- 
resting study, alike to the politician and philosopher, as 
offering the only means of obtaining some knowledge, slight 
or imperfect as it may be, of the true character of that 
diversely estimated soldier and statesman, ere success and 
power had moulded, hardened, strengthened and depraved it. 
Becent events, in a neighbouring country, have attached a 
new interest to such an investigation, by demonstrating, as 
they apparently do, that there was more of vital grandeur in 
Napoleon's life, than the vast majority of Englishmen accre- 
dited him with, inasmuch as it seems hardly credible that a 
highly-civilized nation should eagerly prostrate themselves, 
in what certainly looks like abject humiliation, before the 
newly-gilt and varnished image of a mere conqueror, — 



196 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

It appears incredible, — especially when it is seen that those 
enthusiastic worshippers of the memory of Napoleon cast 
into the altar-flames kindled in his honour alike their 
own most precious possessions, and the sacred inheritance 
of their children, — the priceless immunities of personal 
freedom, liberty of speech, of pen, of thought, as far as 
possible, — the frank confidence of friendship, — the sanctities 
of family intercourse and unreserve ! Or is perchance that 
hypothesis the true one, according to which the apparent 
greatness — true greatness is meant — of Napoleon Bonaparte 
exists only when viewed through the magnifying mirage 
created by the breath of a people whose adoration of their 
hero is simply a mode of offering incense to their own 
vanity 1 A hard question, that time alone can fully answer, 
but which a brief glance at his early years may throw some 
light upon. 

The Bonaparte family is of Italian origin, and indisputably 
noble. The name was only erased from the. " Golden Book" 
of Treviso when, in consequence of their connexion with the 
Ghibelline party, they were driven from Tuscany, and took 
refuge in Corsica, where they were immediately enrolled in 
the ranks of the island nobility. Charles Bonaparte, the 
father of the French emperor, received a legal education at 
Pisa, and he is reported of as a handsome, intelligent, patri- 
otic gentleman, and warmly attached friend and comrade of 
General Paoli, whose heroic defence of Corsica against the 
troops of France, to which the island had been basely sold 
by the Genoese, was not the less glorious for having failed 
before the overwhelming odds by which he was opposed. 
Charles Bonaparte married Letitia Ramoline, the half-sister, 
on the mother's side, of Cardinal Fesch. She was a beautiful 



BONAPARTE. 197 

and accomplished woman, gracefully feminine in manners and 
appearance, and possessed, moreover, of so brave and ener- 
getic a spirit, that she was constantly by her husband's side, 
on horseback, whenever danger, in which he might be in- 
volved, had to be confronted. Madame Bonaparte was the 
mother of five sons and three daughters, and was still in the 
prime of life when her husband died, at Montpelier, France, 
on the 24th of February, 1785, of the painful disease, 
schirrus in the stomach, which terminated the life of his cele- 
brated son. That son thus wrote in after years of his father's 
death, — with what sincerity of feeling we shall presently be 
able to judge : — "I was quietly pursuing my studies, when 
my father was struggling against the violence of a painful 
malady. He died, and I had not the consolation to close his 
eyes. That sad duty was reserved for Joseph, who acquitted 
himself of it with all the duty of an affectionate son." 

Napoleon Bonaparte was in his 1 6th year when his father 
died, he having been born on the loth of August, 1769, at 
the family residence in Ajaccio, which forms one side of a 
court leading out of the Rue Chalet. The active and healthy 
temperament of Madame Bonaparte may be judged of by the 
fact, that on the morning of Napoleon's birth she walked to 
the cathedral of Ajaccio to hear mass, — the 15th of August 
being the day set apart for celebrating the Assumption of 
the Virgin Mary, — one of the highest festivals of the Roman 
Catholic church, — and immediately after her hurried return 
home was delivered of the future emperor on a couch, over 
which a piece of tapestry was hastily thrown, representing 
— but this is an imperial fable — the heroes of the Iliad. A 
man-child at all events, and one of vigorous promise was born, 
and but a few years had glided past when dull eyes might have 



198 EXTRAORDINARY MEET. 

discerned by the young Napoleon's magnificently developed 
forehead, penetrative glance, inflexible, saturnine will and tem- 
perament, a concentration of latent powers that if life and 
opportunity gave leave would make themselves felt in what- 
ever sphere of action their possessor was destined to play his 
part in the world. Very early, too, the boy's native bent of 
mind openly displayed itself. "In my infancy," remarks 
Napoleon himself, " I was noisy and quarrelsome, and feared 
nobody. I beat one, scratched another, and made myself 
formidable to all." As time swept on, this inherent passion 
for dominancy through, the influence of fear, — his worship of 
force, of which he was destined to become, perhaps, the most 
colossal impersonation the world has ever seen, — developed 
itself in various ways, the most obviously-significant indica- 
tion being perhaps, that his favourite plaything was a brass 
cannon weighing thirty French pounds, still preserved in 
Ajaccio, as a striking and emblematical memento of the youth 
and early studies of the great Napoleon. Corsica had been 
officially annexed to France in the June previous to Napo- 
leon's birth, and hence, it is said, he was born a Frenchman; 
just as much so as a Portuguese, born at Lisbon a day after 
the French emperor's proclamation that the house of Bra- 
ganza had ceased to reign, and that Portugal was thenceforth 
annexed to king Joseph's dominions was a Spaniard, — no more; 
and this, too, was Napoleon's own opinion, as is shown by the 
following extracts from a letter addressed to General Paoli, 
from "Auxomme en Bourgogne," before there appeared a 
chance that the young artillery officer's legal character of 
Frenchman might assist him in moulding the revolutionary lava 
into crowns and sceptres for himself and family : — "General : 
I was born when our country was perishing : 30,000 French- 
men vomited on our coasts, drowning the throne of liberty in 



BONAPARTE. 199 

streams of blood, — such was the odious spectacle which first 
presented itself to my sight. The cries of the dying, the groans 
of the oppressed, the tears of despair, were the companions 

of my infancy I at one time indulged a hope that I 

should he able to go to London to express to you the sen- 
timents you have given birth to in my bosom, and to con- 
verse together on the misfortunes of our country ; but the 
distance is an obstacle: the day will perhaps arrive when I shall 
be able to overcome it." The flame of indignant patriotism 
throbbed fiercely, there can be no doubt, in the veins of the boy 
Napoleon. There is still shown in Corsica, about a mile 
from Ajaccio on the road to the Sanguiniere, the dilapidated 
remains of the stone entrance of a villa that belonged to 
Cardinal Fesch, and was used as a summer residence by 
Madame Bonaparte and family, in the grounds of which was 
an isolated granite rock with a cave-like opening, shrouded by 
wild olive, cactus, and almond trees, which acquired the name 
of Napoleon's Grotto, from the sombre lad's habit of shutting 
himself up therein with his cannon to muse over the con- 
quest and subjugation of his country, so frequently and 
vividly dilated upon in his hearing by his mother, who had 
herself, as previously intimated, taken part in the sanguinary 
struggle to maintain its independence. Love of country, in 
its true and lofty sense, was, in fact, only extinguished in 
Napoleon's breast by the all-mastering force of personal 
ambition. His father, M. Charles Bonaparte, had intended 
to share Paoli's exile, but was persuaded to adopt the more 
prudent course of remaining where he was, by the advice of 
his uncle Lucien Bonaparte, an Archdeacon of the Cathedral 
of Ajaccio — a politic compliance which was not long after- 
wards rewarded by Louis XVI., upon the recommendation of 
Count Marbceuf, the French Governor of Corsica, by the 



200 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

appointment of M. Charles Bonaparte to the office of Asses- 
sor to the supreme tribunal of Ajaccio. This sacrifice of 
duty to interest was subsequently referred to by Napoleon 
in indignant terms. " Paoli," he passionately exclaimed, 
upon one occasion, at Brienne, in reply to a depreciatory 
remark upon the Corsican patriot, " Paoli was a great man ; 
he loved his country ; and never will I forgive my father, who 
had been his adjutant, for having concurred in the union 
of Corsica with France. He should have followed Paoli's 
fortune, and have fallen with him." At another time, when 
chafed by the taunts of some of the pupils upon his foreign 
complexion and accent, he said to Bourienne, with rageful 
emphasis, " Ah, I will do thy Frenchmen all the harm it 
may be ever in my power to inflict." These quotations, brief 
as they are, abundantly suffice to prove that Napoleon's love 
of France, of which one hears so much, descended upon him 
with his general's epaulettes. 

At the age of nine years eight months and five days, 
Napoleon Bonaparte entered the Royal Military School at 
Brienne, through the interest of Count Marbceuf, whose good 
offices, constantly exerted in behalf of the family, were 
attributed by the scandal manufacturers of the day to an 
improper intimacy between the Count and Madame Bona- 
parte ; an imputation as false and infamous as the contem- 
porary slanders by like evil tongues concerning the hapless 
Marie Antoinette. Napoleon remained five years five 
months and twenty-seven days at Brienne ; and his personal 
appearance and demeanour whilst there have been described 
as follows, by men who wrote from personal knowledge : — 
" Napoleon Bonaparte was remarked for the colour of his 
complexion, his foreign accent, his piercing interrogative 
looks, and by the tone of his conversation with his masters 



BONAPARTE. 201 

and comrades, in which there was always a certain degree of 
harshness. He was not of a loving disposition. . . The young 
Napoleon was reserved, had a few friends and no intimates, 
but when he chose exerted considerable influence over his 
comrades." M. de Keralso, inspector of the 12th military 
school, made, in October 1784, the following official report of 
his person, conduct, acquirements and capabilities, to the cen- 
tral military school at Paris, whither Napoleon was shortly 
afterwards transferred. With the exception of the passages 
we have taken the liberty to print in italics, the report was 
no doubt, as far as it went, a faithful one. " M. de Bona- 
parte, born August loth, 1769, height 4-ft. 10-in. 10-lines, 
finished his fourth course, of good constitution, excellent 
health, of submissive character, and regular conduct : has been 
always distinguished for application to the mathematics. He 
is tolerably well acquainted with history and geography : he 
is deficient in the ornamental branches, and in Latin. He 
will make an excellent sailor" 

Napoleon had obtained the mathematical prize, in which 
science he was instructed by Perrault: — Pichegru was a 
monitor in the same class, but M. de Keralso forgot to men- 
tion, or was perhaps unaware, that besides being deficient in 
the ornamental branches and Latin, Bonaparte had never 
been able to master the spelling and grammar of the French 
language. It may be that Napoleon's failure in the loftier 
and more humanizing of educational studies should be attri- 
buted to the fact that they were taught by the Monks of the 
order of St. Thavies de Paul, under whose general superin- 
tendence the Brience school was placed, and who were not 
celebrated for their attainments in polite literature. Be this 
as it may, it is not the less certain that Napoleon's appre- 
ciation of authorial ability, of vigour and beauty of style, was 

o 



202 EXTRAORDINARY HEN. 

throughout his life of the dullest kiud, as witness his admira- 
tion of Macpherson's " Ossian," which he deemed to be sub- 
lime poetry, and the turgid tawdriness of his own orders of 
the day, addresses to his soldiers, and despatches — so wofully 
in contrast with the severe, nervous simplicity of those of 
the Duke of Wellington. 

. The military aptitude and predisposition of Napoleon con- 
tinued vividly to manifest themselves. The frequently quoted 
incident of the snow batteries occurred during the winter of 
1783-4, when an unusual fall of snow prevented Napoleon 
from taking his usual solitary meditative walks. A game of 
mimic war might, he thought, prove an agreeable relief to 
the tedium and noisy monotony of the hall in which the 
pupils could alone take exercise, and at his suggestion the 
snow bastions were erected, assailed, defended selon les regies 
during ten days, — he commanding the assaulting party, — by 
which time stones and gravel having gradually superseded 
the use of snow missiles, the play, fast becoming much too 
earnest, was peremptorily put an end to. At another time, 
when the rumour had spread that the monks did not intend 
permitting the pupils to visit the annual fair held in the 
neighbourhood of Brienne, Napoleon advised as a precau- 
tionary measure that the garden wall should be secretly 
undermined. This was done in such a manner that when the 
day arrived, and the monks and masters having securely 
locked in the impatient pupils, were gravely sermonizing 
upon the evil consequences of permitting youth to attend 
fairs, a mass of wall fell suddenly in, disclosing a huge gap 
through which the exultant boys disappeared beyond recall, 
before their astounded superiors thoroughly comprehended 
what had happened. Once, too, it chanced that young 
Bonaparte, for some infraction of school discipline, was ex- 



BONAPAKTE. 



203 



cae 




eluded from the students' table, and compelled to wear a 
penitential dress. The compressed but fiery rage of the 
proud boy was so violent as to bring on a severe nervous 
attack, • notwithstanding that his mathematical tutor, Per- 
rault, perceiving the terrible effect of the punishment upon 
his remarkable pupil, begged him off before the allotted 
period of penance was nearly expired. 

Napoleon left Brienne for the central Paris school in Oc- 
tober, 1784, not, it should seem, to the very poignant regret 
of the authorities he quitted, nor to the extreme delight of 
their Paris confreres when they became better acquainted with 
their new acquisition. A note by the sous-principal describes 

o 2 



204 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

liim as " a domineering, imperious, headstrong boy." He was 
perpetually remonstrating against the laxity of discipline and 
the expensive habits tolerated at the school. An extract 
from a memorial to M. Berton will show the spirit of those 
remonstrances and the tone in which they were urged: — 
" Since the King's pupils (les eleves du Roi) are all of them 
poor gentlemen destined for the military profession, should 
they not be really, essentially educated to that end? Accus- 
tomed to a sober life, to be rigidly scrupulous in conduct and 
appearance, they would become robust, would be able to sup- 
port the inclemency of seasons, the fatigues of war, and 
inspire respect and a blind devotion in the soldiers placed 
under their command." So rude a censor, and a mere boy, 
too, was as speedily as possible got rid of j his examination 
was hastened, pronounced extremely satisfactory, and he 
was presented, Sept., 1785, with his commission of second 
lieutenant in the regiment of La Fere, or First of the Artillery. 
His father died in the previous February, and Napoleon 
would have had no difficulty in obtaining leave to visit him 
had he been so minded, nor is it likely that the expense of a 
journey from Paris to Montpelier and back again could have 
been an insurmountable obstacle, as his great uncle, Lucien 
Bonaparte, the archdeacon of the cathedral of Ajaccio, made 
him an allowance at this time, continued till he obtained his 
captain's commission, of twelve hundred francs (forty-eight 
pounds) per annum. The regiment of La Fere was quartered 
at Valence, where it was promptly joined by the juvenile 
lieutenant, whose military duties, however, did not entirely 
engross his time and meditations, for in 1786 he competed 
for a prize offered by the Academy of Lyons for the best 
essay on the Abbe" Raynal's question : — " What are the 
principles and institutions by application of which mankind 



BONAPARTE. 205 

can be raised to the highest pitch of happiness?" Napoleon 
gained the prize, against what competitors does not appear ; 
but in after years, when Talleyrand, having obtained the 
manuscript from the archives of the academy, presented it 
to the Emperor, his Imperial Majesty, after glancing at a 
line or two only, threw it with an expressive shrug of disdain 
on the fire. A very appropriate fate there can be little doubt, 
though it did obtain the academical prize; Raynal's ques- 
tion being in itself an utter absurdity, and Napoleon, even in 
his riper years, one of the most illogical reasoners upon matters 
of theory that ever meddled with the science of dialectics. 
In proof of this it is sufficient to refer to the marvellously 
absurd propositions which, according to his own statements 
at St. Helena, he vainly endeavoured to persuade the juries, 
consuls, and lawyers whom he had commissioned to draw up 
the codes which bear his name, to embody in those famous 
instruments. In 1789-90, during a part of which latter year 
he was on leave in Corsica, he commenced what was intended 
to be a political, civil, and military history of that island. 
It was never published, nor indeed finished, though some 
negotiations were entered into with Mr. Joly, a bookseller, 
of Dole, with a view to its printing and publication. It is 
probable that his still flaming Corsican patriotism, of which 
this projected history is another proof, prevented him from 
joining actively, as he otherwise might have done, in the 
revolutionary movement which was shaking old France to its 
foundations ; albeit, we have it in his own words, that he was 
from the first with the " patriots," and the honest reason of 
his being so: — "I might have adhered to the king had I 
been a general; being a subaltern I joined the patriots 1" 
He felt, however, very slight personal respect towards the 
general mob of patriots, for happening to be dining with 



206 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

Bourienne, at a restaurateur's, in the Rue St. Honore, Paris, 
when about five or six thousand of them rushed past shouting 
and cursing towards the Tuilleries, he sprang up and made 
after them, exclaiming to his companion, — " Suivons cette 
canaille la? He thus witnessed the brutal humiliation of 
Louis XVI., in being compelled to put on the bonnet rouge, 
and drink the nation's health at the bidding of the ruffians 
in whose power he had weakly placed himself. Bonaparte's 
surprise and indignation were unbounded, " Che Coglione /" he 
exclaimed to Bourienne, " why did they admit that rabble ? 
They should have swept away five or six hundred of them 
with cannon, and the rest would be running still." He was, 
moreover, thoroughly convinced from that moment that the 
unfortunate monarch was a doomed man. To return, how- 
ever, to the young Napoleon's more personal history. In 
1791, his ire was greatly excited against one Butafuco, a 
major-general, and representative of the Corsican nobility in 
the French National Assembly, against whom he forthwith 
launched a furious pamphlet, in which it was made to appear 
that the major-general had corruptly betrayed the interests 
confided to his care. One hundred copies of this pamphlet 
were sent to Corsica, where it had the honour of being 
adopted and re-published by the Patriotic Society of Ajaccio. 
Although written in Napoleon's usual spasmodic, out-of-breath 
style, yet as offering the very best specimen of his literary 
efforts extant, a rather lengthened quotation may be accept- 
able. The concluding vocative paragraph contains, by the 
way, a curious assemblage of names to be addressed by 
Napoleon Bonaparte : — " Sir, — From Bonafacio to Cape Cossa, 
from Ajaccio to Bastia, there is one chorus of imprecation 
against you. Your friends keep out of sight, your relations 
disown you, and even the man of reflection who does not 



BONAPARTE. 207 

allow himself to be swayed by popular opinion is for once led 
away by the general effervescence. But what have you done? 
What are the crimes to justify such universal indignation, 
such complete desertion ? This, Sir, is what I wish to inquire 
into in the course of a little discussion with you." It appears, 
however, that there was no need of inquiry; the major- 
general's iniquity having been already published in very 
striking type, — so, at least, says the ferocious pamphleteer : — 
" The history of your life, since the time at least when you 
appeared upon the stage of public affairs, is well known. Its 
principal features are drawn in letters of blood!" After 
lacerating the culprit till there is really no spot on which to 
lay an additional lash that is not already streaming with gore, 
the unappeased young Corsican contrives to vary the infliction 
by assailing the wretched major-general through his wife, 
after this fashion : — " And you, respectable unhappy woman, 
whose youth, beauty, and innocence were vilely prostituted, 
does your pure and chaste heart beat under a hand so criminal? 
In those moments in which nature gives an alarm to love — 
in those moments you press to your heart, you become iden- 
tified with the cold and selfish man who has never deviated 
from his character, and who in the course of nearly sixty 
years has never known anything but the care of his own 
interests, an instinctive love of destruction, the most infamous 
avarice, the base pleasures of sense. By and by the glare of 
honours, the trappings of riches will disappear ; you will be 
loaded with general contempt. "Will you seek in the bosom 
of him who is the author of your woes, a consolation indis- 
pensable to your gentle and affectionate mind ? Will you 
endeavour to find in his eyes tears to mingle with yours? 
Alas! if you surprise him in tears they will be those of 
remorse ; if his bosom heave, it will be with the convulsions 



20S EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

of the wretch who dies abhorring nature, himself and the 
hand that guides him ! Lameth ! O Robespierre ! O 
Petion ! O Volney ! O Mirabeau ! O Baviere ! Lafayette ! 
this is the man who dares to seat himself by your side! 
Dripping with the blood of his brethren, stained by every sort 
of vice, he presents himself with confidence in the dress of 
a general, the reward of his crimes !" 

Such effusions as these diminish one's surprise at the aver- 
sion Napoleon I. manifested towards literature and literary 
people, he could hardly have endured to look them in the 
face. Happily, too, for the young officer of artillery, his 
advancement in life did not depend upon his pen, nor upon 
the higher attributes of intellect, but simply upon an unusual 
mastery of the mathesis which teaches how overwhelming 
numbers may be with the greatest rapidity and certainty 
directed and concentrated upon a given point. Supreme 
knowledge, no doubt, as the world goes, or at least, has 
hitherto gone ; and in 1792, Lieutenant Bonaparte accom- 
plished his second step in the only path where such a power 
could be profitably available ; he having in that year obtained 
a captain's commission by priority, in the regiment of Gre- 
noble. Promotion and patriotism, it is grievous to be 
obliged to add, agreed ill with each other, and as usual, the 
weaker power gave way in the struggle. The Convention 
placed a large reward upon the now aged and venerable 
Paoli's head, who was defending his country as zealously 
against Robespierre's myrmidons as he did against the armies 
of Louis XVI.; and Captain Bonaparte, in the interest of 
democracy — liberty, of course, — they were his polar stars, 
— fought against Paoli ■ and Corsica ! Admiral Truguet 
landed a large force upon the island, and Captain Bonaparte 
was despatched from Bastia, with orders if possible to sur- 



BONAPARTE. 209 

prise Ajaccio, ids native city. He landed a portion of his 
forces in the Gulf from the frigate placed at his service, 
captured the Torre de Capitello, nearly facing the town, but 
being immediately invested by the Corsican forces, he was 
compelled to re-embark with precipitation upon the return 
of the frigate, after having blown up the Torre de Capitello. 
Shortly after this the Bonaparte family were banished from 
Corsica, and the mother of Napoleon, with two of her 
daughters, took refuge at Marseilles. 

Not long afterwards Fate summoned Napoleon Bonaparte 
to Toulon, and there caught him in the resistless and tumul- 
tuous tide by which he was floated, whirled on to empire and 
to exile. In these pages we do not accompany him thither, 
and have only to remark in conclusion, how very singularly, 
ominously, the youth of this extraordinary man prefigures, not 
perhaps the catastrophe, but at all events the views and pur- 
poses of his life, and the means, — Force ! Fear ! by which he 
alone sought their accomplishment. The glory and grandeur 
of France, it is clearly manifest, only grew precious in his 
eyes when they became synonymous with his own; and even 
the national vanity, which he regarded as a prime element of 
Force, was carefully cultivated but in one direction, — that 
which tended to swell his own pride. " The cries of the 
dying," he exclaimed, in his letter to General Paoli, " the 
groans of the oppressed, the tears of despair, were the com- 
panions of my infancy." Ay, and history will be compelled 
to add, the remorseless multiplication of those cries, those 
groans, those tears, was the chief occupation, and constituted 
what men call the fame of his manhood. Much more might 
be said, did not the long agony of Saint Helena, borne with 
no more fortitude than the school-boy penance at Brienne, 
sorrowfully entreat silence ; and awaken in the coldest 



210 EXTRAORDINARY MEX. 

breast, a compassionate sympathy for the fallen Emperor, 
which it may be doubted he ever felt for one human being 
— save himself. " Posterity will do me justice," were his 
frequent exclamations as the night of Death gradually over- 
grew and darkened the sad gloom of captivity. " Posterity 
will do me justice !" There can be no question but it will ; 
neither, spite of ephemeral appearances to the contrary, is 
there any doubt that the posterity which will pronounce 
that final and irreversible decree of justice, is very near at 
hand. 

It may be as well to mention that no document quoted 
in this paper was derived from the wonderful contents of the 
sealed box, which so wonderfully came to light some dozen 
years ago, containing numberless manuscripts and note books 
written by the deceased Emperor, when a lieutenant of artil- 
lery, which showed that he had contrived to master every 
kind of knowledge, with the exception of grammar and 
orthography, — and every variety of composition — epic, his- 
toric, romantic, pastoral, critical, scientific and statistic. One 
of the geographical common-place books, concludes with an 
unfinished, and certainly very remarkable sentence in Lieu- 
tenant Bonaparte's own hand, thus : — " Sainte Helene, petite 

He ." To which had there been added, " ou je mourrai 

le 6 Mai, 1821," the fabrication would not have been one 
whit more palpable nor more audacious. 



-e^^gggS^^- 




LORD BYRON. 



I" ORD BYRON'S notorious pride of birth was, there can 
-" be no doubt, a perfectly legitimate one, according to the 
received definition of the kind of ancestry which entitles an 
individual to boast of being descended from them. The 
Byrons, or Burens, are mentioned in Domesday Book ; they 
fought at Cressy; again, with Richmond against Richard at 
Bosworth Field. Harry VIII. presented them with the 
abbey and lands of Newstead, Nottinghamshire, and Charles I. 
created the head of the family, Baron Byron, of Rochdale, 
Lancashire ; in gratitude for which honour the Byrons fought 
valiantly on the monarch's side, at Marston Moor, and other 
battles of the time, and fortunately escaped unscathed, or at 



212 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

all events with life, from the unrespecting swords of the par- 
liamentarians. The wide gap in the genealogy of the race, from 
Edward III. to Henry VII., the facile imagination of their 
poet- descendant had no difficulty in partially filling up, from 
a slight hint afforded by a number of dimly- visible Saracenic 
looking figures, painted upon some old panels in one of the 
chambers of Newstead Abbey. Several of the unchronicled 
chiefs of the family were, he decided, crusaders who had led 
their vassals to Palestine and perished there ; and this painted 
scrap of domestic history, in which a female of fine eastern 
features is conspicuous, recorded some traditional episode of 
the war against the Paynim — the rescue, probably, of the 
lady from death, or other extreme peril, by the half-extin- 
guished Byrons by her side. Plain, prosaic Mr. Gait, how- 
ever, bluntly asserts the painting to be neither more nor less 
than a representation of the story of Susanna and the 
Elders, executed, it may be reasonably supposed, for the delec- 
tation of some devout abbot of ISTewstead, desirous of having 
the punishment which follows such evil courses constantly 
before his eyes. Be this as it may, it is quite certain that the 
line of Byron does not improve as it draws nearer to our own 
time, and the figures in the procession become visible by the 
common light of day, instead of through the heraldic mist 
which, often charitably, intercepts and subdues the glory of 
great barons, to the more fastidious taste of the present 
generation. Two, especially, of the latest of the race, the 
immediate predecessors of him whose genius has conferred an 
undesirable immortality upon their else long since forgotten 
names, are a bitter commentary upon the pride of birth, when 
solely founded upon the fiat of the Heralds' College j — a 
matter only touched upon here, because without doing so, it is 
impossible fairly to appreciate the late Lord Byron's boyhood, 



BYRON. 213 

or the after life of which that boyhood was the forecast 
shadow — impossible to comprehend how thoroughly adverse 
were the influences which surrounded him in his earlier years 
to the wise government and genial development of a natu- 
rally noble and generous, but wilful, capricious, and impulsive 
temperament and disposition. t 

Let us take the period of 1784, four years previous to the 
noble poet's birth. The fifth Lord Byron was then living in 
grim seclusion, at Newstead Abbey, which, in contempt or 
disregard of the interest of the apparent heir — a grandson — 
he permitted to fall to wasteful ruin. In 1765, this lord had 
been tried by his peers for the wilful murder of his neighbour 
and kinsman, Mr. Chaworth, of Annesley Hall, and acquitted 
of the charge ; a verdict which the opinions of those most 
familiar with the precedent and accompanying circumstances 
of the case did not ratify. The duel, as it was called, took 
place suddenly, in a kind of chance-medley, but there had 
been bad blood between the parties, and, justly or unjustly, 
Mr. Chaworth was held by the whole country-side to have 
been purposely taken at a disadvantage, and unfairly slain. 
Finding himself looked upon in this agreeable light by his 
neighbours and former friends, the homicide lord passed the 
remainder of his life in solitary gloom, each passing year 
leaving him more and more selfishly eccentric, morose, and 
unapproachable. His nephew, Captain Byron, was a hand- 
some, fashionable man of the world : a successful roue, who 
had accomplished the brilliant achievement of seducing the 
Marchioness of Carmarthen, with whom he eloped to the con- 
tinent, and whom on the passing of a divorce bill at the 
instance of the frail lady's husband, he married — the only 
honourable act known of Captain Byron ; although one can 
hardly believe that there were not some unspoken of redeem- 



.214 EXTRAORDINAEY MEN". 

ing points in his life, which might, if repeated, weigh against 
the testimony of his recorded deeds. The re-married 
divorcee died, after giving birth to a daughter, Augusta 
Byron, subsequently Mrs. Col. Leigh ; and Captain Byron 
had once more, as he believed, an opportunity of extricating 
himself from the abyss of debt in which he was involved, by 
the help of some confiding heiress, whose hand his handsome 
person and glozing speech might enable him to obtain. The 
unfortunate lady in whose favour he ultimately decided, as 
fulfilling the necessary conditions, was Catherine Gordon, 
" a short, fat person," of high Scottish lineage, and, much 
more to the purpose in Captain Byron's opinion, possessed in 
bank-shares, fishing rights and landed property, of a hand- 
some fortune. Her father, Mr. Gordon, of Gight, was a 
descendant of Sir William Gordon, the third son of the Earl 
of Huntley, by the daughter of James I., — the blood conse- 
quently, on both sides was of the purest and highest quality. 
Captain Byron's addresses were immediately successful, and 
the marriage took place — not, however, before the bride had 
been over and over again warned of the wretched fate that 
must inevitably await her as the wife of such a man ; but 
when was the glittering mirage of a love-gilded future spread 
before the eyes of a fond, trustful woman by a master in the 
.art, sensibly disturbed, much less dissipated, by advice, 
however earnest, eloquent, or disinterested? An utterly 
unblest union it indeed proved — resulting even worse than 
the old Scottish ballad, quoted by Mr. Moore, predicted : — 

" where are ye gaen, bonny Miss Gordon, 
O where are ye gaen sae bonny and braw? 
Te're married, ye're married wi' Johnny Byron, 
To squander the lands o' Gight awa'." 

But a brief season elapsed before the lands o' Gight, bank- 
shares, fishing rights, were indeed squandered, and all that 



BYKON. 21 

remained of the bride's once ample income was an annuity of 
.£150, and the reversion of £1,112, upon the death of her 
grandmother. In 1786, the year after marriage, the ill-mated 
couple went over to France, whence Mrs. Byron returned 
alone in the autumn of 1787, and took lodgings in Holies- 
street, Cavendish-square, London, where George Gordon 
Byron, the future lord and poet, was born on the 22nd of 
January, 1788. At the baptism of the child, one of whose 
feet had been accidentally twisted at the moment of birth, 
the Duke of Gordon, and Colonel Duff of Feterosso, appeared 
as sponsors. 

Early in 1790, Mrs. Byron removed to Scotland, where she 
was joined by her husband, for there was still a chance that 
something more might be wrung out of the poor pittance 
left his wife for the maintenance of herself and son, and for a 
short time they lived together in Queen-street, Aberdeen. 
Captain Byron next took apartments for himself, in the same 
street, and after having induced Mrs. Byron to encumber 
herself with debt on his account to the amount of £300, 
the interest of which sum reduced her income to £135 a 
year, he finally quitted her, passed over to Yalenciennes, and 
died there in 1791. When to this brief notice of the home 
in which the future poet was born and cradled, it is added 
that Mrs. Byron, though much more sinned against than 
sinning, was an ill-educated, violent-tempered person, with 
more than the ordinary pride of high lineage, and none of the 
graces of manner with which it is usually accompanied, the 
chances in such a home-atmosphere of the favourable develop- 
ment of a child of high gifts and impressionable volcanic 
temperament, may in some degree be estimated, as well as 
the powerful reasons which the late Lord Byron had for 
pluming himself upon his birth. Yet let us not be induced 



216 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

by compassion for a noble spirit so grievously misplaced to 
pass too harsh a judgment upon a grossly-wronged and 
outraged woman. She dearly loved her son withal, and her 
son, spite of the bitter and contemptuous terms in which 
he sometimes addressed and spoke of her, loved his mother. 
The expression of her fondness was as vehement and passion- 
ate as that of her rage and fury. At one moment he was 
" a lame brat," the next he was bid never to forget " that he 
might be a lord;" now, in her "hurricane rages" she would 
heap blows and curses upon him, — and immediately after, 
melting into fondness, half stifle him with kisses, and vow 
" that his eyes were as beautiful as his father's." Amid such 
scenes, in actual poverty, and a shadowy-coronet constantly 
dangling before his eyes, becoming more distinct in his 
sixth year, when the grandson of the homicide lord died at 
Corsica, the subject of tins memoir passed those early years 
which stamp impressions seldom effaced by the wear and tear 
of the roughest after-life, much less by the silken pressure of 
an idle, self-indulgent one. When five years of age, he was 
sent to a day-school in Aberdeen kept by a man of the name 
of Bower, where he barely achieved in a twelvemonth the 
knowledge of his letters, the cost whereof was precisely one 
pound, five shillings per quarter. He was then placed 
under the Reverend Mr. Ross, a Scottish clergyman, who 
taught him to read ; Mr. Paterson, the son of his mother's 
shoemaker, initiating him in the rudiments of Latin ; and 
soon after intelligence arrived that by the death of the grand- 
son he had become presumptive heir of an ancient English 
barony, he was admitted to the Free Grammar School of 
Aberdeen, where he still remained when by the death of the 
old lord, on the 19th of May, 1798, the long-coveted coronet 
descended upon his boy-brow, he then being in his eleventh 



BYRON. 217 

year. "Mother," lie half-breathlessly exclaimed as lie ran 
into her room in the first blush and excitement of his new 
dignity, " Mother, do you see any difference, — do I look like 
a lord 1 ?" The next day at school the proud thought glowing 
in his brain found a different expression. Upon the boys* 
names being read over, his own was called as Dominus Byron, 
the usual reply, " A dsum," would not come, — was choked in 
the tide of conflicting emotions that welled up from his 
swelling heart, — and he burst into a passion of tears. 

The Earl of Carlisle, a distant relative of the young lord 
on the Gordon side, consented to act as his guardian, and 
Mrs. Byron, having sold her furniture by public auction, 
realizing thereby the magnificent sum of seventy pounds odd, 
left Aberdeen with her son, to take possession of Newstead 
Abbey. As if fortune was now determined to make thorough 
amends for previous disfavour, his Majesty George III. 
affiliated Mrs. Byron about this time to the pockets of the 
British people, by royal patent, securing her three hundred 
pounds per annum, payable from the public treasury. 

Before following the exultant mother and son to Newstead 
it is necessary to jot down the indications of character mani- 
fested by young Byron during his residence at Aberdeen. 
The distortion of his foot, occasioning a slight lameness, 
appears to have made from his earliest days of consciousness 
a painful impression on his mind, sometimes displayed in out- 
spoken passion, as when a lady meeting him in the street 
with his nurse said, " What a pretty boy, and what a pity he 
has such a foot." He shook his child's whip at her, and 
exclaimed with a passion of tears — " Dinna — dinna speak of 
it;" whilst upon other occasions, the same morbid feeling 
vented itself in jocular bitterness, — as when, seizing the arm 
of a boy lamer than himself, he exclaimed to his mother and 

p 



218 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

others within hearing, " Come and see the two laddies with 
the two club feet, ganging up the Broad-street." His " silent 
rages," to use the phrase he himself applied to the tempests 
of pent-up passion that could not vent themselves in words, 
though clearly enough revealed by his swollen veins, stone-pale 
face, and flashing eyes, relieved themselves by strange acts at 
times. In one of these fits of wordless fury, he one day, 
when the merest child, upon being blamed for soiling his 
frock, tore it with his tiny hands deliberately to rags. 
When about six or seven years of age, he himself relates that 
it was necessary to wrench a knife from him by force which he 
had turned against his own breast ; and there is still pre- 
served at Aberdeen, as a precious relic, the saucer which he 
bit a piece out of when under the influence of these " silent 
rages." Yet amidst all the fierceness of temper and obdurate 
defiance of his mother's menaces, and often actual violence, 
he was easily led by kind and gentle words. For this we 
have the authority of Mary Gray, his nurse, for whom he 
always expressed great regard, and who was strongly attached 
to him ; and many years afterwards, when he was approach- 
ing manhood, Dr. Pigot, who observed him closely, confirmed 
Mary Gray's testimony. — "Few people understand Byron, 
but I know that he has a naturally kind and feeling heart, 
and that there is not a particle of malice in his composition." 
Mary Gray used to read the Bible to him, the Psalms 
especially, the 1st and 23rd of which, she induced him to 
learn by heart; and long afterwards, in mature life, he 
attributed the delight he had in reading the Old, not the 
New Testament, to those readings of Mary Gray's in 1796. 
Other impressions of the same year retained a lasting hold of 
his mind. He accompanied his mother to the Highlands in 
the neighbourhood of Ballater, about forty miles up the Dee 



BYROtf. 219 

from Aberdeen, and was greatly struck by the magnificent 
scenery thereabout, particularly Lochin-y-gair, towering with 
his dark diadem of clouds above the giant mountains crowd- 
ing upwards in endless perspective towards the Linn of Dee; 
and when upon a short visit at his godfather's, Colonel Buff 
of Feterosso, he became desperately enamoured of the " clear 
white brow, dark brown hair, and hazel eyes of Mary Duff" — 
a child of about his own age, which was eight. His mother's 
servant, whom, not being able to write sufficiently well him- 
self, he tormented into penning love-missives in his name to 
the adorable Mary, thought him crazy; and well she might, 
especially after witnessing the behaviour and conversation of 
the two sweethearts in the children's apartment; the boy 
expressing bis violent admiration of the girl, and she, at 
every pause he made to take breath, tinning compassionately 
to her younger sister Helen, and regretting that she too had 
not an admirer, an article so much superior to the doll she 
was so apparently contented with ! Lord Byron recurs in his 
letters to this singular passage in his boyhood, to express his 
utter inability to account upon any rational hypothesis for 
his violent admiration at such an age of a child like himself. 
" How very odd," he writes, " that I should have been so 
devotedly fond of that girl;" and he graphically describes the 
resuscitation of the sentiment after it had lain dormant in 
his mind for upwards of eight years. " Oh Byron," said his 
mother one day, when he was in his seventeenth year, " I 
have a letter from Edinburgh, and your old sweetheart, Mary 
Duff, is married." At hearing this, her son burst into a 
paroxysm of tears and frenzied grief, which so alarmed Mrs. 
Byron, that she took care not again to mention Mary Duff's 
name in his presence. The explanation of all this is perhaps 
less difficult than his lordship imagined. The emotions 

p 2 



220 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

excited in his mind by the solemn music of the Psalms, — the 
magnificent Highland scenery, — and the clear brow, dark 
brown hair, and hazel eyes of Mary Duff, are all referable to 
the same source — a strong newly-awakened sense of beauty, 
— the beauty of harmony, colour, expression, — the dawn of 
the poetic faculty — 

" That from without all lovely things we see, 
Extracts emotions beautiful and new," 

emotions entirely apart from the fervid selfishness of passion, 
in the ordinary sense of the word. His frenzied behaviour 
when Mrs. Byron unexpectedly announced the young lady's 
marriage, is ascribable to another cause. At that very 
time his heart was darkened with the shadow of the only 
woman, Miss Chaworth, for whom throughout his life he felt 
deep, genuine, fervent love, in its true power and meaning ; 
and the fear, changing hourly to certainty, that " even now 
she loved another," must have been throbbing painfully in 
his brain, when the sudden tidings of one whom he had 
loved, or thought he had, having been united to another, 
echoed, imaged, embodied that fear ; and what his heart fore- 
boded, not that which his ear heard, betrayed itself in an 
agony of passionate despair. This at least seems to be a rational 
solution of what else would be an utterly inexplicable psycho- 
logical phenomenon. In glancing over the days passed at 
Aberdeen, Lord Byron remarks that he especially remem- 
bered the old bridge near that city, and its mysterious 
inscription — 

"Brig o' Balgownie, wight is thy wa', 
"V\T ae wife's son, and a mare's ae foal 
Down shalt thou fa'," 

which it would appear made him dread to cross it, albeit 



BYRON. 221 

once fairly thereon, he would hang with childish delight over 
the parapet, gazing into the swift stream beneath. He was 
certainly "a wife's ae son," bnt not being mounted upon "a 
mare's ae foal," the fear seems rather an unreasonable one, 
and was probably an affectation or an after-thought. It 
should be added that his lordship exhibited much boxing 
pugnacity at the Aberdeen Free Grammar-school, thrashing 
most boys of his own size, and that his pride of peerage 
exhibited itself whilst there in many ways — a growing pro- 
pensity, which not long afterwards obtained for him the 
sobriquet of "The Old English Baron," from his constant 
iteration of the immense superiority of an ancient lordship 
over a new creatiom In fact, the extreme liberalism, the 
elaborate contempt of Britain and the British aristocracy, 
displayed in many of Lord Byron's writings, were thoroughly 
unreal, — the grossest shams ever tricked out in gorgeous 
verse. 

Newstead Abbey, upon the arrival there of Mrs. Byron 
and the little boy from Aberdeen — the phrase latterly 
employed by the deceased lord when speaking of his pre- 
sumptive heir — accompanied by Mary Gray, was found to be 
in a sad state of dilapidation, and lodgings were taken in 
Nottingham, where a quack of the name of Lavender tor- 
tured the young peer's foot to no purpose, till the Earl of 
Carlisle suggested that Dr. Baillie should be consulted ; for 
which purpose chiefly, Mrs. Byron at once removed to 
London ; and the skilful treatment of the unfortunate limb 
so far succeeded that Lord Byron wrote in great exultation 
to Mary Gray's sister, who had been his first nurse, to 
announce " that he had at last got a common boot on." His 
lordship, soon after his arrival in London, was placed with 
Dr. Glennie, of Dulwich, a judicious teachei, whose efforts to 



222 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

remedy his pupil's defective education were marred by Mrs. 
Byron's capricious interference, spite of the Earl of Carlisle's 
repeated remonstrances, who, finding it useless to contend 
with such a self-willed violent person, threw up the guardian- 
ship in disgust. In 1802, Byron went to Harrow, which he 
says he hated, where he acquired the reputation of a bold, 
roystering boy, the head of all rows against the townspeople 
and masters, and eager and industrious enough in the 
acquirement of knowledge, except what was taught in the 
settled curriculum of the school. He had an especial talent 
for oratory — declamation rather — but no one suspected him. 
of the slightest genius for poetry, and his first English verse- 
exercises, the translation of a chorus from the " Prometheus " 
of Eschylus, was received with marked coldness by the head- 
master, Dr. Drury. Lord Byron's Harrow reminiscences 
include the late Sir B. Peel, and suggest a comparison 
between his own attainments and those of that distinguished 
individual. "There were always great hopes of Peel, amongst 
us all, masters and scholars, and he has not disappointed 
them. As a scholar he was greatly my superior; as a de- 
claimer and actor, I was reckoned at least his equal; as a 
schoolboy out of school, I was always in scrapes, he never; 
and in school he always knew his lesson, I rarely ; but when 
I knew it, I knew it nearly as well. In general information, 
history, &c, I was his superior, as well as of most boys of 
my standing." There is an anecdote connecting the same 
names, and not related by his lordship, though highly honour- 
able to him. It must have occurred soon after his arrival at 
Harrow, at which time he was in his fourteenth year. A 
brutal fellow, whose name is not given, claimed the privilege 
of fagging little Peel, who resisted, but was beaten into sub- 
mission, and that he might not be tempted to rebel again, 



BYRON. 223 

his tyrant inflicted a kind of bastinado upon the inner fleshy 
part of his victim's arm, twisting the limb as he did so in 
such a way as to cause the greatest amount of pain possible. 
Byron stood by, but feeling it would be useless to attempt 
fighting the burly brute, asked with tears in his eyes, and a 
blush of rage upon his cheeks, how many stripes Peel's tor- 
mentor intended to inflict. " Why, you little rascal, what is 
that to you?" was the reply. « Because," said Byron, " if you 
please, I will take half." 

In 1801, Byron's school vacation was passed with his 
mother at Cheltenham; in 1802 they were at Bath; in 1804 
at Nottingham; and in 1806 at Southwell. At Cheltenham the 
distant view of the Malvern hills revived in his mind with 
augmented intensity the enthusiastic wonder and delight first 
awakened by the mountain scenery of the Highlands; and 
oddly enough the Mary Duff mania revived at about the 
same time also, more warmly-coloured than its predecessor. 
This time it was his cousin Miss Parker's " dark eyes, long 
eye-lashes, completely Greek cast of face and figure, looking 
as if made out of a rainbow, all beauty and peace," that tem- 
porarily excited his fancy, caused "his first dash into poetry," 
and hindered him for several weeks from "eating, sleeping, 
or resting." This feeling subsided long before the charming 
being who called it forth passed from earth, about eighteen 
months afterwards. Miss Parker died of consumption. His 
half-sister, Augusta Byron, told him that upon his name 
being suddenly mentioned in the presence of the dying girl, 
" she coloured through the paleness of mortality," — a proof 
to him that his beautiful cousin had reciprocated his boy- 
fancy. At Bath he accompanied his mother to masquerades 
and other scenes of fashionable dissipation; and 1803-4 wit- 
nessed the commencement, progress, and catastrophe of his 



224 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

acquaintance with Miss Mary Anne Chaworth. His mother 
had taken lodgings at Nottingham, but Lord Grey de 
Ruthven, to whom Newstead Abbey was let, had always an 
apartment kept ready for him, and he usually slept there 
after passing the day at Annesley Hall, walking about the 
grounds in dreamy reverie, or shooting at a target, except 
when, attracted by the sound of the piano, he would steal 
into the music-room, and sit gazing with wet, gleaming eyes 
at Miss Chaworth — especially when the beloved voice gave 
melodious utterance to the plaint of unrequited love in the 
ballad of "Poor Mary Ann." Mr. Moore suggests that the 
name accounts for Byron's partiality, but was it not rather 
the sentiment of the ballad echoing his own misgivings — 

" He she loved her passion slighted, 
Broken all the vows he plighted — 
Therefore, life no more delighted," 

which constituted its chief and enthralling charm? Miss 
Chaworth was eighteen years of age at this time, — that is, a 
woman, — and Byron sixteen only, — a mere boy in age and 
appearance, however precociously virile in sentiment and 
passion, and it is not at all surprising, therefore, that his shy, 
dreamy, inarticulate, though entirely unmistakable manifes- 
tations of devotion, excited the young lady's mirth, and in- 
duced her to amuse herself by sporting with a feeling which 
she no doubt imagined could have neither root nor per- 
manence. Byron formed one of a party, including Miss 
Chaworth and her cousin, in an excursion to Castleton and 
Matlock. He has described one of the incidents of this 
pleasure-trip thus : — " A. cavern in Derbyshire I had to 
cross, in a boat in which two people only could lie down, a 
stream which flows under a rock so close upon the water that 
the boat had to be pushed on by a ferryman, who stooped 



BYRON. 



225 



m m 




the while. The companion of my transit was M. A. C, with 
whom I had been long in love, and never told it, though she 
had discovered it without. I recollect my sensations, but I 
cannot describe them, and it is as well." In the summer 
evenings at Matlock, they had dances on the greensward ; an 
exercise in which Miss Chaworth excelled and greatly de- 
lighted, but whereon her lame boy-lover could only gaze, as he 
sat apart from the gay revellers, in moody bitterness and 
dejection. Not long after returning to Annesley Hall he 
overheard the gay-spirited beautiful girl say, in reply to a 
remark from her maid — " Do you think I care anything for 



226 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

that lame boy ?" The bite of a serpent, the stroke of a dagger, 
could not have occasioned a more terrible shock, than this 
contemptuous comment upon his aspirations, barbed too by 
a jeer at the deformity which had ever been the cankering 
curse of his existence. Night as it was, he ran bareheaded 
from the house in a state of distraction, and did not pause till 
he reached Newstead Abbey, where in the silence and dark- 
ness of his chamber he could give free course to the tumult 
of rage, mortification, and despair by which he was convulsed 
and maddened. A day or two restored his outward calm, 
and when he took his final leave of her K who was the star- 
light of his boyhood," he said, with not more than ordinarily- 
betraying emotion — ■ I suppose when I see you again you 
will be Mrs. Chaworth f — it being, it would appear, the cus- 
tom in Nottinghamshire fbr the husband to assume the wife's 
name during the first months of married life. " I hope so," 
was the gay reply — a hope realized the following year, when 
she married Mr. Musters. " Byron," said Ms mother, when 
the intelligence reached her in 1805, " I have news for you." 
" Well, what news ?" " Take out your handkerchief, first." 
" Pshaw !" " Take out your handkerchief, I say." He did 
so, to humour her. " Well, then, Miss Chaworth is married." 
He became deadly pale for a moment, and a strange ex- 
pression gleamed in his eyes; but after an instant or two he 
said, " Is that all f " That all !" echoed the mother, " why, 
my God, Byron, I expected you would have been over- 
whelmed with grief." Mrs. Byron was not a very acute 
observer. The outward expression of anguish had been fore- 
stalled by the passion of tears into which he had been sur- 
prised a few months previously by Mary Duffs marriage ; 
and he was upon his guard now. 

In 1805, Lord Byron left Harrow for Cambridge TJniver- 



BYRON. 227 

m 

sity, passing the vacation both of that and the following year 
at Southwell. The quarrel between the mother and son had 
become more envenomed, outrageous than ever. Dishes, cups, 
glasses, were the least formidable missiles wielded by the lady 
in her hurricane rages; a poker being quite as readily made 
use of, if at hand. To such a pitch of rage had they at one time 
exasperated each other by mutual taunts and revilings, that 
they both sought the village apothecary — Mrs. Byron to cau- 
tion him not to sell her son poison, and the son to give the 
same warning with respect to his mother ! 

The years of Lord Byron's boyhood may now be said to 
have terminated. " One of the deadliest and heaviest feelings 
of my life," he writes, " was to feel that I was no longer a 
boy." The publication of the " Hours of Idleness," and the 
mocking criticism of the volume by the " Edinburgh Review," 
had the effect of suddenly developing his lordship's fierce 
poetic fervour and keen sarcastic powers, and thenceforth 
his life was a prolonged duel with society, against which 
he ceased not during life to launch the arrows of his 
eloquent melancholy scorn. The evil influences of his 
early life, imperfectly portrayed in this brief notice — 
unchecked pride, distempered passion, the bitterness of un- 
requited affection — projected their baleful shadow over his 
whole existence ; and a mighty genius, that in happier circum- 
stances might have illumined and blessed the world with light 
from heaven, has served only to dazzle and mislead mankind 
by meteoric flashes of lurid fire — the trace of which is too 
often marked by ashes, desolation, nun, and moral death ! 




THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON. 

rpHE circumstances attendant upon the birth of this illus- 
-*- trious soldier on the 1st of May, 1769, at Dangan Castle, 
county of Meath, Ireland, at which date, and where, there 
ean be no reasonable doubt, notwithstanding certain plausi- 
bilities to the contrary, the Duke of "Wellington was born, 
were hardly of a nature to suggest that a very brilliant future 
awaited the newly-arrived stranger. The castle, a roughly- 
"built, poorly-furnished stronghold of a previous and much 
ruder age, belonged only nominally to the child's father, 
Garret, the second Earl of Mornington, who had long since 
encumbered the family estates, not very extensive when they 
came into his possession, beyond all reasonable hope of extri- 
cation ; the title, which in this country stands a young man 
in excellent stead of a fortune, by enabling him to wed one, 



WELLINGTON. 229 

was already bespoken by Richard Wellesley, or Wesley, as 
the name was then written, a healthy elder brother; and 
even the snug little borough of Trim, a constitutional heir- 
loom of the family's, which might be turned to good account 
in the Irish parliamentary market, would of course also fall 
to the lot of the said Richard till the demise of his father, 
the present Earl, called him to the Upper House. The 
military profession, that unfailing resource in happier times 
of the younger branches of noble families, moreover presented 
just then an extremely doleful prospect, it being the almost 
universal conviction that the glorious peace concluded some 
six years previously had closed the Temple of War, for a 
century to come at least. In truth, if Ave look at the actual 
circumstances of the time, at the apparent condition of the 
world, in the hero-producing year 1769, it will be seen that 
the confident predictions of the peace- prophets of that day 
were, upon the whole, very reasonably based. The English 
States of America, relieved of the dangerous and exasperating 
presence of their long-time pugnacious neighbours, the French, 
were still brimful of loyalty to the parent country, whose 
arms had mainly brought about that desirable consummation. 
France was dancing, singing, boasting, bowing, with her 
usual vivacity, grace, and sprightliness beneath the time- 
consecrated regime of the elder Bourbons; the successes of 
Clive had dissipated the peril which at one time appeared to 
menace the peaceful pursuits and modest establishments of 
English merchants trading to India; the '45, experience 
clearly proved, had finally disposed of the Stuart dynastic 
danger, — in short, it was manifest to everybody except a few 
rusty-brained, old-world fanatics, that the elements of inter- 
national hatred and strife which had so long clouded the 
political horizon were dispersed, or in rapid process of be- 



230 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

coming so, and the long pined for day of universal brother- 
hood and peace, in which men should beat their swords into 
ploughshares, their spears into pruning hooks, and not learn 
war any more, was at length dawning upon mankind with 
brightest promise. The future of this child, this Arthur 
Wellesley, therefore, would appear to have been somewhat of 
the dismalest, unless, indeed, he should prove of a serious 
turn of mind, in which case Trim might perhaps help him to 
a rectory, with a bishopric within approachable distance. 
Not long, alas, did the wisdom of men and ministers permit 
the philanthropic dreamers of the world to indulge in the 
beatific visions they had conjured up. Arthur Wellesley 
had but just passed his sixth birth-day when the echoes of 
Bunker's Hill came booming over the Atlantic to proclaim 
that an unjustly-attempted impost of threepence per pound 
upon tea had sufficed to rekindle the fires of national strife, 
and create new opportunities for the exercise and sustenance 
of that military chivalry which a great orator has assured us 
is not only the chief defence of nations — a quite debateable 
proposition — but the nurse of every manly sentiment and 
heroic enterprise. A French poet says, "Napoleon Bona- 
parte leapt exultingly in his mother's womb at the sound of 
the cannon which proclaimed the annexation of Corsica to 
France." If this be true, it is plain that, supposing Arthur 
Wellesley to have been gifted ever so inferiorly to his great 
rival with prophetic sympathy, the Plantagenet blood flowing 
in his veins must have been instantly kindled to a flame as 
the preluding signal of the giant strife it was his destiny to 
wrestle down, (it was the flaming brand caught from the 
American conflagration which exploded mined and volcanic 
France,) pealed over the waters from the Western hemi- 
sphere ! At all events we knov^, that about this time, Lord 



WELLINGTON. 231 

and Lady Mornington arrived at the satisfactory conclusion 
that the military profession was not, after all, such a hopeless 
one as it had been represented, and that a pair of epaulettes 
would consequently be a sufficient as well as an easily obtain- 
able provision for lithe, combative, plain, — Lady Morning- 
ton's accustomed expression was a more decided one, — little 
Arthur. 

The blood of the Plantagenefcs is at any rate no fiction, 
whether informed by prophetic instinct or not, as gentlemen 
versed in genealogies, and who it should seem do not think 
the greatness achieved by the stern, sagacious, heroic warrior, 
sufficient for his glory, unless gilded by the prestige of 
royalty, have distinctly proved. They demonstrate the Duke 
of Wellington to be a blood-relative, — a distant one, no doubt, 
of Her Majesty, Queen Victoria, — by descent from King 
Henry I., surnamed Longshanks. The evidence appears 
satisfactory, and further that the intermediate links of 
the long chain of light descending down are almost all Irish. 
They hold together as follows : — Lady Elizabeth Plantagenet, 
youngest child of Edward I., became Countess of Hereford, 
and her daughter married the first Earl of Ormonde, Pierce ; 
the eighth Earl of Ormonde's daughter, Helen Butler, es- 
poused Donogh, second Earl of Thomond, and had issue, Lady 
Margaret O'Brien, who became the wife of Dermod, Lord 
Inchiquin ; the honourable Mary O'Brien, daughter of the 
fifth Lord Inchiquin, married Michael Boyle, Archbishop of 
Armagh, and Lord Chancellor of Ireland, by whom she had 
a daughter, Eleanor Boyle, who married the Right Honour- 
able "William Hill, M.P., and was grandmother of Anthony 
Hill, first Viscount Dungannon, whose daughter Anne, 
Countess of Mornington, was the mother of Arthur, Duke of 
Wellington ! 



232 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

The Saxon lineage of the great Duke, shews poorly by the 
side of this Hibernian ancestral roll, and, worse than all, 
cannot be clearly traced beyond the Colleys or Cowleys of 
Rutlandshire, of whom two brothers, Robert and Walter 
Colley or Cowley, migrated to the county Kilkenny, in the 
reign of Henry VIII. Those clever gentlemen first managed 
to secure the clerkship of the crown for their joint lives, and 
subsequently Robert obtained the Mastership of the Rolls, 
and Walter the office of Solicitor-general. A descendant of 
these astute lawyers succeeded by will to the property of the 
Wellesleys or Wesleys of Dangan Castle, with which family 
the Cowleys were previously connected by marriage, assumed 
their name, and was created by George II., Earl of Mornington. 
As if to bring the comparative shabbiness of the English line 
into more prominent relief, an enthusiastic delver amidst 
collateral issues turned up Colley Cibber, whom he calls 
" the eminent dramatist and poet," amongst the Rutlandshire 
Colleys, and forthwith dispatched the gratifying intelligence 
to the " Times" newspaper, that Colley Cibber, the hero of 
the " Dunciad," and " Poet," who communicated an odour to 
the laureate wreath, which it will require many Words- 
worths and Tennysons thoroughly to dispel, was ancestrally 
associated with the Duke of Wellington and Prince of 
Waterloo ! The duke's own opinion of the value of all or any 
such industrious researches in his honour, would probably 
have been pretty much the same as that expressed by 
Napoleon Bonaparte's brusque reproof of the Austrian genea- 
logists, who had suddenly made the important discovery that 
the proposed son-in-law of their emperor was descended from 
Rodolph of Hapsburgh, through some of the princes of 
Treviso; — "Bah!" exclaimed Napoleon, "my patent of no- 
bility dates from the battle of Monte Notte !" 



WELLINGTON. 233 

Passing from heraldic speculations to sober biographic 
verity, we find that the Duke's immediate progenitors, the 
first and second Earls of Mornington, were both distinguished 
for musical ability. His grandfather, the first earl, played 
the violin admirably ; and the son, his grace's father, not 
only attained very early proficiency upon the same instru- 
ment, but became a composer of skill and taste, of which the 
lasting popularity of the glee, " Here in cool Grot," is perhaps 
more conclusive evidence than the degree of Doctor of Music 
conferred upon his lordship by the University of Dublin. 
The Duke of Wellington inherited his father and grandfather's 
love of harmony, though not the capability of producing it ; as 
his constant attendance at Her Majesty's Theatre, and muni- 
ficent patronage of musical festivals, concerts, oratorios, &c, 
sufficiently prove. Literature — English literature, more 
especially, does not appear to have been cultivated or cared 
for by the Mornington family — except, perhaps, by Richard, 
afterwards Marquis Wellesley — but as to the Duke himself, 
there is irresistible evidence in his Despatches, vigorously as 
they are written, that his education in respect of high-class 
English literature was entirely neglected, or that he himself 
had an insuperable aversion to such studies. M. Capefigue 
has remarked, that the word " glory" is never used in the 
" Wellington Despatches," whilst that of " duty" is of constant 
occurrence; a very complimentary discoveiy, though not 
intendedly so on the part of the Frenchman ; and it is not 
the less true and remarkable, though not at all complimentary, 
that you may search those volumes in vain, not alone for 
quotations from the great English writers, but for any turn 
of thought or expression indicative of any, the most super- 
ficial, acquaintance with them. The Duke's style is unques- 
tionably an admirable one — lucid, terse, full ; and the Des- 

Q 



234 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

patches, witli insignificant exceptions, are models of military 
composition, that irresistibly impress the reader with a lively 
sense of the Duke's vigorous sagacity, astonishing prescience 
in all matters connected with the writer's professional duties, 
and stern, resolute will and firmness ; but not one passage 
whereof, can withal be remembered without a special exertion 
to do so; and for the simple reason that it is only the intel- 
lect that is addressed, — imagination, sentiment, by which 
alone memory is, without effort, made prisoner, never ! Nelson 
was the reverse of the Duke in this respect ; and because he 
was so, his great signal is as far removed in its sublime sim- 
plicity from the cold propriety of Wellington's orders of the 
day, as from the stilted fustian of Bonaparte's. The names 
of the Duke of Wellington's home preceptors, if he had any, 
which is not likely, have not been preserved, and at the age 
of ten he was at the Rev. Mr. Ganer's school at Chelsea, 
where, says the " British and Foreign Review," published in 
1840, Arthur Wellesley, unlike boys of his age, was never 
seen to play, but generally came lagging out of the school- 
room into the playground ; in the centre of which was a 
large walnut-tree, against which he used to lounge and lean, 
observing his schoolfellows who were playing a variety of 
games around him. If any boy played unfairly, Arthur 
quickly gave intelligence to those engaged in the game : on 
the delinquent being turned out, it was generally wished that 
he should supply his place, but nothing conld induce him to 
do so : when beset by a party of five or six, he would fight 
with the utmost courage and determination until he freed 
himself from their grasp ; he would then retire again to his 
tree, and look about him as quiet, dejected, and observant 
as he had been before." 

There is a sentimental air about this anecdote which sadly 



WELLINGTON. 



235 




takes away from its credibility ; and another which relates to 
a slightly subsequent period in the Duke's boy-life, whilst it 
satisfactorily disposes of the "quiet, dejected, observant," 
fiction, is marred by the embellishments that have evidently 
been tacked for effect to the authentic story of a stout fight 
for marbles : — " Arthur Wellesley, and his elder brother, 
afterwards the Marquis of Wellesley, passed much of their 
boyhood at Brynkinhalt, in North "Wales. Whilst there 
they chanced one day to meet a playfellow, David Evans, 

Q 2 



236 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

and his sister, returning from school. Arthur Wellesley 
challenged David Evans to a game at marbles, which was 
accepted, and the sister walked on. She had not gone far 
when her brother shouted lustily for her to come back to his 
assistance, as Arthur Wellesley, he said, had cheated him out 
of his marbles, and refused to give them up. The girl 
instantly returned, sided with her brother, and both fiercely 
assaulted the alleged wrongful possessor of the marbles. 
Arthur Wellesley was about twelve, the girl ten, and her 
brother two years younger; and Richard Wellesley per- 
formed the part of spectator of the fight, of which Arthur 
soon had the worst, and was fain to hand over the marbles 
and beat a hasty retreat, with tears in his eyes." This may 
be all true enough, with the exception of the tears, which, 
however, are not so absurd an invention as another statement 
of this "authoritative" anecdote, to the effect that the Marquis 
Wellesley found time whilst Governor-General of India to 
write to David Evans " reminding him of their games in boy- 
hood." That the Duke himself as the writer goes on to 
state, when passing through Denbighshire in 181o, inquired 
at Brynkinhalt for David Evans, and recognised him as his 
old playfellow, has a greater smack of likelihood about it ; 
and it is moreover declared that both the victors, David and 
his valiant sister, in this the Duke's first recorded battle, are 
still living at Brynkinhalt. 

The Earl of Mornington died at Kensington on the 22nd 
of May, 1781, and with the consent of her son the new lord, 
Lady Mornington, a woman of energy and resource, took upon 
herself the sole and active superintendence of the terribly 
embarrassed pecuniary affairs of the family. Arthur Wellesley 
not long afterwards accompanied his elder brother to Eton, 
where he did not very long remain, nor greatly distinguish 



WELLINGTON. 237 

himself, not having passed the fifth form when he left. 
A practical jest of some humour played off upon Lady 
Dungannon during the Eton holidays, has been attributed to 
the Duke, though we suspect its paternity was exclusively 
Lord Mornington's. Both the brothers, it appears, were invited 
to pass their holidays with Lady Dungannon, who was 
residing in Shropshire, and it was agreed by way of producing 
an agreeable sensation in her ladyship's mind, to inform her 
that their sister Anne had run off with a footman. Lady 
Dungannon was of course terribly shocked, but the boys 
entreated her not to divulge the unfortunate occurrence, as 
it was possible their sister might be overtaken and brought 
back again. Lady Dungannon promised compliance, but 
found herself unable, upon paying a visit to Mrs. Mytton, an 
intimate friend and neighbour, immediately afterwards, to 
confine the sad intelligence to her own bosom ; and on her 
return she threw her juvenile visitors into convulsions of 
merriment by gravely exclaiming, " Ah, my dear boys, ill- 
news travels apace. Will you believe it ? Mrs. Mytton 
knows already all about poor Anne ! " 

An incident which shews the future Field Marshal in a 
clearer and more genuine aspect, inasmuch as it reveals a 
glimpse of the unyielding patriotism and soldierly spirit of 
hardihood and daring by which his after life was distinguished 
occurred about the same time. News of the surrender of the 
British army under Lord Cornwallis, at York Town, to the 
combined American and French forces commanded by 
Washington, had reached England, and amongst the nume- 
rous rumours and on dits published by the newspapers in 
connexion with that humiliating event, was one subsequently 
confirmed by Colonel Tarleton, — one of the most enterprising 
and successful officers employed in the King's service during 



238 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

the American war of independence, — that lie, Colonel 
Tarleton, had offered, previous to the surrender, to break 
through the beleaguering force and join Sir Henry Clinton, 
whose delay in hastening to the relief of the troops in York 
Town appeared unaccountable, if Lord Cornwallis would 
grant him two thousand men only. The colonel's request 
was not complied with, and a day or two afterwards the 
surrender was accomplished. Lord Mornington found his 
brother one morning looking very pale and excited, with a 
newspaper contaiuing this intelligence crumpled in his hand 
by the vehemence of hik emotion. " It's quite true, Morning- 
ton," exclaimed Arthur Wellesley, the moment he saw his 
brother : " Tarleton, had he been allowed, would have spared 
us the disgrace of the York Town capitulation ! " 

At the close of the war with the United States and their 
European allies, Lady Mornington proceeded on a short tour 
to the continent, taking her family with her, with the excep- 
tion of Lord Mornington, who had quitted Eton for the 
University of Oxford. Arthur Wellesley, who was sup- 
posed to have acquired as much book-education as a soldier 
stood in need of, special studies, in those days, not being con- 
sidered essential, in England, as a qualification for the mili- 
tary profession, accompanied his mother with the rest, to 
France, for it should seem no other purpose regarding him 
except as helping to pass away the time as agreeably as 
possible, till he obtained a commission. Fortunately, the 
pleasure-party passed by Angers, in the department of the 
Maine and Loire, France, where the military college of Douay, 
a sister establishment to that of Brienne, was situated. The 
mathematical and artillery section of the school was under 
the direction of Pignerol, an experienced officer, and Lady 



WELLIXGTOX. 239 

MorDington having upon inquiry ascertained the terms for 
board and instruction to be within compass of her very 
slender means, the earnest wish of Arthur Wellesley to 
become a student of the establishment was, with some reluc- 
tance, acceded to. He was placed for two years under the 
care of Pignerol, and the carriage party proceeded on their 
pleasure trip. All that is known of Arthur Wellesley at 
Douay is, that he was a decorous, tractable, pains-taking 
young man, and diligent in acquiring a minute acquain- 
tance with the practical details of the profession he had 
chosen, more than in studying its theory. At the end of the 
stipulated term, he returned to England ; it would appear, 
somewhat unexpectedly to Lady Mornington, whose first 
intimation that he had left France, was the decisive one of 
seeing him at the Haymarket theatre, causing her ladyship 
to exclaim, almost angrily, " I do believe there is my ugly 
boy, Arthur." 

No time was lost in applying for a commission, for which, 
as a matter of course, the brother of the Earl of Mornington, 
and as it was now agreed in family council, the representative 
of the borough of Trim, in the Irish parliament, at the earliest 
possible moment, had not long to wait, and Arthur Wel- 
esley was gazetted ensign in the 73rd regiment, on the 7th 
March, 1787, — he being then within about two months of 
his eighteenth birth-day. His promotion was unusually 
rapid, and it was not long before he was captain in the 58th 
regiment, aid-de-camp to the Earl of Westmoreland, lord- 
lieutenant of Ireland, member of parliament for Trim, (1790,) 
and grievously in debt — not, indeed, to any ruinous amount, 
for his habits could hardly be called extravagant ones, — but 
more than his captain's pay, which was his only pecuniary 



240 EXTRAORDINARY HEX. 

resource, would enable him very easily to liquidate. Neither 
his mother nor Lord Mornington could render him any 
efficient aid, and he might have been put to considerable in- 
convenience, but for the voluntary assistance tendered by a 
boot-maker, on Lower Ormonde Quay, Dublin, where he 
lodged. The proffered loan was thankfully accepted, repaid 
as speedily as possible, and as soon as Captain Wellesley's 
parliamentary influence could be brought to bear, the lender's 
generous confidence was rewarded by the bestowal of a lucra- 
tive situation upon his son. 

Captain Wellesley, member of parliament for Trim, is 
described as " a ruddy-faced, juvenile-looking person," 
dressed in a scarlet uniform, with very large epaulettes. 
" His address," remarks Sir Jonah Barrington, " was unpo- 
lished j he spoke occasionally, and never with success, and con- 
veyed no promise of the unparalleled celebrity he afterwards 
obtained." As the unparalleled celebrity Sir Jonah alludes 
to, was neither legislative nor oratorical, it is difficult to 
understand how it could possibly have been presaged by the 
most brilliant parliamentary display. As to the juvenile 
member's political opinions, they belonged, like the borough 
for which he sat, to the family, — and as regarded parlia- 
mentary reform, were, and very naturally, of a decidedly un- 
compromising kind. Captain Wellesley parenthetically ex- 
pressed them with great energy of tone and manner, upon the 
occasion of presenting a petition in favour of some relaxation 
of the penal statutes in force against Roman Catholics, 
which he believed might, to a certain extent, be safely 
conceded. A previous speaker had mixed up the question 
of Irish parliamentary reform, quite pertinently there can be 
no doubt, with that of Irish emancipation, a dangerous asso- 



WELLINGTON. 241 

ciation, which the member for Trim warmly rebuked. 
" Should that question," (of reform in parliament) exclaimed 
Captain Wellesley, "be introduced, I would strenuously 
oppose it." Forty years afterwards, the Duke of Wellington 
repeated the same sentiment with equally decisive emphasis — 
the Duke's consistency of opinion upon that important subject 
cannot therefore be gainsaid, however much its policy and 
wisdom may be disputed. 

Happily for Arthur Wellesley's fame, it was not long 
before he was summoned to a more fitting arena for the exer- 
cise of the rare faculties with which nature had bountifully 
gifted him, than the floor of the Irish House of Commons. 
Before, however, leaving Ireland as Lieutenant-colonel of the 
33rd regiment, — so swift had been his ascent in military 
rank, — to enter upon the career in which he was to win 
immortal renown, he took the precaution, though not 
pressed, or liable to be pressed by legal process, to provide 
for the payment in full of his debts in all eventualities. To 
this end he executed a deed assigning to Mr. Dillon, woollen 
draper, of Parliament-street, Dublin, as much of his profes- 
sional income as he could possibly spare, in trust, for equal 
distribution amongst his creditors, till their claims were dis- 
charged with interest ; and at the same time insuring his life 
in the capital sum of his debts. Mr. Dillon willingly accepted 
the trust, faithfully fulfilled it, and Lieutenant-colonel 
Wellesley, to use his own expression, embarked for Holland 
" with a clear conscience." 

Albeit the Duke of Wellington was greatly favoured by 
the accident of aristocratic connexion and influence, his start 
in life, it will have been seen, was beset with difficulties that 
might have permanently discouraged ordinary men j and al- 



242 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

though it may be that but for his brother's occupancy of the 
influential position of Governor-general of India, opportu- 
nities of distinguishing himself would not have been so readily 
obtained, it is still manifest, that under any conceivable cir- 
cumstances, a man of such prompt] energy and resource, of 
such sleepless industry, clear penetration, resolute, unshrink- 
ing will, politically masked by an impassive, marble exterior, 
must have made himself felt, sooner or later, and decisively, 
wherever the destiny of nations was to be decided by the 
sword or by diplomacy. A magnificent general there can be 
no doubt, amongst sane men, that he was : in every attribute 
that goes to the formation of one unsurpassed if not un- 
rivalled, — sudden, impetuous, fierce as flame if an essential 
purpose might be thereby advanced, — and on the contrary, 
motionless, immoveable, refusing tempting battle, patient, 
deaf as iron to taunts of timidity or want of enterprise, 
did his long-meditated, unswerving game require such 
apparent inaction. No question, it may not moreover be inap- 
propriate to remark in conclusion, — no question that there 
were very many great occasions in the Duke's great life, to 
which only commanding military genius was equal, — but it is 
wonderful to observe, as any one easily may for himself, by 
only a cursory examination of the Despatches, what immense 
results in the aggregate were obtained by the Duke, 
solely in virtue of the habits which he had sedulously culti- 
vated from his boyhood, — early rising, strict attention to 
details, — taking nothing ascertainable for granted, — unflag- 
ing industry, and silence, except when speech was necessary, 
or certainly harmless. " I will take care to be here punc- 
tually at five to-morrow morning," said the architect of New 
London Bridge, in acceptance of the Duke's request that he 



WELLINGTON. 243 

would meet him at that hour on the following morning. 
" Say a quarter before five," replied the Duke with a quiet 
smile ; " I owe all I have achieved to being ready a quarter 
of an hour before it was deemed necessary to be so ; and I 
learned that lesson when a boy." 








SIR ROBERT PEEL. 



HI HE sure refuge which ib has so long been the privilege 
-*- and glory of this country to afford men fleeing from the 
spiritual and temporal despotism of the continent has been 
in many ways abundantly rewarded ; and not the least of the 
material benefits derived from that wise and generous policy 
was the introduction into England, not long after the revoca- 
tion of the Edict of Kantz had rendered France an unsafe 
abode for those of her children who were too honest and 
courageous to surrender their consciences into the keeping 
of the State, of greatly improved methods in the art of 
calico printing, the rapid development of which branch of 
industry, from but the other day in the life of nations, is one 
of the most notable facts of an age of marvellous industries. 



PEEL. 245 

Some families from the south, of France associated and esta- 
blished themselves upon the banks of the Thames, and by the 
processes they had invented or improved, produced printed 
stuffs which commanded a very high relative price in the 
market ; and as a matter of course set numerous active brains 
at work to discover the mode or modes by which those grace- 
ful and ingenious designs were effected and multiplied with 
such ready, unexceptionable exactness. Failure and disap- 
pointment, as might be expected, attended the first gropings 
of English experimentalists in search of the golden and 
jealously-guarded secret of the foreigners, and amongst the 
earliest of those who by force of ability and perseverance 
were ultimately successful, not in pirating the processes of 
the French establishment, but in printing calico with a skill, 
economy, and expedition, which finally drove the fabrics 
of the Thames printing-works out of the market, was a 
Mr. Peel, of Fish-lane, Blackburn, Lancashire, a reputedly- 
crotchetty person, and projector of a score or two of broken- 
down experiments in mechanics and chemistry, who, wise 
men said, had much better devote his attention to the culti- 
vation of his small farm in the neighbourhood of the town, 
than be perpetually throwing away time and money in the 
search after new-fangled schemes and devices. Mr. Peel was, 
however, not a man to be deterred by failures, however fre- 
quent and exasperating, from following out any new whim 
or project which chanced to flit across his scheming brain, 
and the new art of calico printing appears to have very early 
taken firm hold of his mind. His first successful experiment 
was a " Parsley Leaf," which he engraved upon a pewter 
plate, and transferred in colour to a piece of cloth; Mrs. 
Milton, a next door neighbour, performing the calendering 
process with a flat smoothing iron, the experimentalist 



246 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

having chosen to make the venture in the temporary absence 
of his family, who had witnessed the falling through of so 
many abortive schemes. An essential condition of commer- 
cial success in addition to a sharply-defined, vivid impression 
of the pattern was, that the mordent used should so bite in 
the colours, that they would resist the dissolving action of 
soap and water : in this, too, it was found, the experiment 
had succeeded to admiration, and Parsley Peel, as he was 
afterwards called, exclaimed, with a shout of exultation, that 
" he was a made man." 

No time was lost in turning this great success to account ; 
the farm and stock were disposed of, and weaving and 
printing works on a small scale erected at Brookside, near 
Blackburn, where Mr. Peel's energy, skill, and perseverance, 
reinforced by the zeal and industry of his three sons, speedily 
laid the foundation of the splendid fortunes of the Peel 
family. Mr. Peel was constant in his efforts to perfect the 
mechanical processes of his art ; and readily adopted all new 
and promising methods which the inventive genius of the 
country — once thoroughly aroused to the importance of the 
new industry, for such essentially it was — soon placed at 
his service ; and he was the first, it is said, to recognise and 
avail himself of the advantages offered by the cylindrical 
carding machine. 

It was noticed that Robert, the third and youngest son, 
and esteemed the most practical and earnest-minded of them 
all, evinced, soon after attaining his majority, a marked in- 
clination to spend such leisure as was permissible at the house 
of his mother's brother, Mr. Haworth, near Bury, and it 
was not very long before he sought an opportunity of re- 
spectfully suggesting to his family that the works of Brook- 
side, flourishing as they were, could hardly be so extended as 



PEEL. 247 

to suffice for the eligible placement in life of all the sons, 
and that for himself he should prefer taking his chance in 
an independent position, if his father would assist him in 
that object. In fact, his uncle, Mr. Haworth, had intro- 
duced him to Mr. Yates, whom they had all formerly known 
as the landlord of the " Black Bull, 1 ' Blackburn, who had 
lately erected print-works on the Irwell, but had succeeded 
very poorly as yet, for want of practical knowledge of 
the business. Mr. Yates would, he, Robert Peel, had reason 
to know, admit him as a partner, and success, in that case, 
both believed to be certain. Much hilarity followed this 
announcement, which was, nevertheless, finally acquiesced in, 
and soon afterwards Robert Peel set off for Bury, entered 
into partnership with Mr. Yates, and by his skill, activity, 
and judgment, the firm of Yates and Peel speedily acquired 
a high degree of prosperity. Advertisements for skilled and 
unskilled workpeople of both sexes were placarded over the 
country, and very soon waggon-loads of paupers and children 
were amongst the numerous arrivals which came pouring into 
Bury, in search of the sudden El Dorado that had sprung up 
in its neighbourhood. Cotton-spinning and weaving were 
added to calico-printing, — the entire process of the cotton 
manufacture, in fact, from the pod to the piece, from the 
bale to the ball-dress, was carried on upon a vast scale, 
first at the Irwell works, and afterwards at Burton- 
upon-Trent, and Tamworth, by Robert Peel himself, who, 
moreover, had in the mean time espoused Miss Yates, the 
eldest daughter of the senior partner, a circumstance, the 
anticipation of which no doubt caused the hilarity at Brook- 
side, when the youngest son first proposed leaving the pater- 
nal roof, in search of fortune, and requiring a word or two 
in this place. 



248 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

The remarkable prosperity of the works at Brookside, 
aiding the general mania just then prevalent for embark- 
ing in the calico-printing business, in which it was believed 
a man possessed of some capital, and who had his head 
properly screwed on, could hardly fail of realizing a splendid 
fortune, had induced Mr. Yates to dispose of the " Black 
Bull," and invest the whole of his means in the Irwell 
printing works. The sp3culation would, however, as did 
many others of a like kind, have proved a dismal one, but for 
the subtile influence from which cotton mills are no more 
exempt than cottages. Robert Peel, upon calling on Mr. 
Yates, in company with his uncle, Mr. Haworth, met there 
with the graceful little girl he had often noticed playing 
about the Black Bull Inn, Blackburn, so wonderfully im- 
proved in both person and mind, that he at once mentally 
determined that she should be the wedded partner of that 
future greatness, which he had for a long time felt, or 
affected a presentiment he was determined to achieve. 
When the time came for asking the lady's consent to this 
long-since foregone conclusion, she proved nothing loth to 
share Mr. Robert Peel's already prosperous fortunes. They 
were married amidst much jubilation ; and on the 8th of 
July, 1788, Mrs. Peel gave birth, at a cottage near Chamber- 
Hall, Bury, which was just then under repair, to a son, the 
Robert Peel whose name is now a household- word in every 
English home. 

Prom childhood, Robert Peel was destined by his father to 
be a statesman, after the pattern and example of Mr. Pitt ; 
or rather, to speak correctly, after the pattern and example of 
the father's interpretation of Mr. Pitt's career and policy, — 
a very different matter. This early aspiration for the future 
political greatness of his eldest born was naively expressed, 



PEEL. 249 

by the first Sir Robert Peel, in the House of Commons, just 
before his distinguished son rose (1819) to move his celebrated 
currency resolutions, and acknowledge with the heroic 
candour natural to him that the notions with which his mind 
had been previously indoctrinated, more extended experience 
and a closer study of the subject had convinced him were 
untenable. " I have mentioned," said the elder Sir Robert, 
who spoke with sorrow, not anger, of his son's resolute self- 
emancipation from one of the strong prejudices in which he 
had been sedulously nursed and trained, " I have mentioned 
the name of Mr. Pitt. My own impression is certainly 
a strong one in favour of that great man. All of us have 
some bias, and I always thought him the first man of the 
country. I well remember, when the near and dear relative 
(his son) I have alluded to was a child, I observed to some 
friends that the man who discharged his duty to his country 
in the manner Mr. Pitt had done was the man of all the 
world the most to be admired, most to be imitated; and I 
thought at that moment that if my life and that of my dear 
relative should be spared, I would some day present him to 
his coimtry to follow in the same path." The sincerity of 
this garrulous gossip may not be questioned, but the honour- 
able baronet was not sufficiently far-sighted to discern the 
true and essential direction of Mr. Pitt's gigantic footsteps, — ■ 
mistaking as he did that great minister's temporary and 
necessity-compelled aberration from the course he would fain 
have pursued, for its chosen and permanent direction, — much 
less to guide his son aright in that perilous, lofty, and ambi- 
tious path. Indeed, in one very essential point the first Sir 
Robert Peel differed openly and entirely from Mr. Pitt, — 
that of the repression of the slave-trade, which the patriotic 
baronet held to be, in conjunction with inconvertible paper- 



250 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

money, essential to the prosperity of the British people, and 
the maintenance of the British throne and constitution. The 
currency maxims in which he educated his son were those of 
Mr. Yansittart, and his own — (he published a pamphlet 
entitled "The National Debt, a National Blessing") — not 
Mr. Pitt's ; and the intolerance which he untiringly inculcated 
with reference to the admission of Catholics to equality of 
civil privilege, was of Lord Eldon's school, and entirely 
opposed to the liberal views upon that point of Chatham's 
celebrated son. In nothing, in fact, did the first Sir Robert 
Peel comprehend or resemble Mr. Pitt, save in his ardent, 
enthusiastic, indomitable pride and love of country, and 
earnest devotion to what he believed to be the truth, — which 
great attributes, powerfully developed in his son, ultimately 
sufficed, as the world knows, to wither up and annihilate the 
educational prejudices with which they were for a time asso- 
ciated and obscured. 

Within the narrow circle of those prejudices did the well- 
intentioned baronet confine as strictly as child and boy nur- 
ture might, the generous and plastic intellect of his son. 
The extravagant influences of the menacing, unquiet time, 
strengthened those home-teachings. The war with France, 
which, whatever may be said of its origin, had become, 
when young Robert Peel was capable of appreciating the 
position of the country, an implacable, uncompromising- 
struggle for national existence ; and it is a remarkable fact 
that the unquailing, stubborn opponents of French con- 
tinental domination, who persisted, never abating for an 
instant one jot of heart or hope in foretelling that war's 
^triumphal issue — by which result, to use Lord Eldon's signi- 
ficant expression, " England gained all that she had not lost,'* 
were chiefly to be found amongst the high-flying Protestant 



PEEL. 251 

ascendancy, " last ditch and last guinea" class of politicians 
to which the elder Sir Robert Peel belonged. He had, in 
fact, obtained (1797) his baronetcy — the first step on the 
road of titled distinctions leading to the peerage which he 
was sanguine his son, if not himself, would reach — by the 
munificent subscription of <£10,000 to the Patriotic Fund, set 
on foot to aid the government in carrying on the war with 
vigour and resolution, and other services in a like spirit, such 
as the raising and organizing the Bury "Volunteers, to whom 
Master Robert Peel, when about thirteen years old, was intro- 
duced in the full uniform of a lieutenant, unattached, by his 
exulting father, the colonel, in a spirited speech, which was 
received with great applause, the more fervently hearty, 
perhaps, that the peroration consisted, essentially, of an invi- 
tation to dine, as the guests of the orator, at the principal inn, 
immediately after the arduous duties of the field were con- 
cluded. Robert Peel was intrusted with the toast of " No 
Surrender !" which appears to have had reference, in this 
instance, to the negotiations which ended in the truce of 
Amiens, and acquitted himself in a way that elicited a 
tornado of approbation, huskily joined in by the gratified 
father, who could only ejaculate brokenly in reply to the 
numerous handshaking congratulations of his friends, — " Yes 
— yes, thank you — thank you — an English boy — an English 
boy — to the back bone, you may depend." 

Practical Sir Robert had long before this clearly discerned, 
with those shrewd eyes of his — limited and earthward as 
their range might be — the immense power which the ability 
to address public assemblies effectively confers in this country 
on its possessor, and had anxiously cultivated that faculty in 
his son from a very early age ; not by causing him to acquire 
merely declamatory skill in recitation, that is taught at every 

e 2 



252 



EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 



^Jl 




principal school, is easily acquired, if no physical disqualifica- 
tion exist, and is of very slight world-service. Sir Robert per- 
sonally exercised his son in marking the points and pith of 
a speech or discourse ; made him repeat, in his own language, 
the substance of what he had heard ; and when differing from 
the argument that had been used, reply to it, parentheti- 
cally, as he went on ; accustoming him, in short, to think 
tipon Ms legs, and give facile unlaboured expression to his 



PEEL. 255 

thoughts as they arose naturally in his mind. This practice 
commenced by Sir Robert engaging the boy attentively to 
mark the Sunday morning's sermon, as much as possible, men- 
tally, and making notes only of the sequence of the discourse 
and argument, which he had afterwards to repeat, recomposing 
the sermon, and delivering it with appropriate emphasis and 
action, whilst standing before his father in the library, or, in 
fine weather in a retired part of the grounds of Chamber 
Hall. To this admirable discipline for an ambitious orator 
the late Sir Robert Peel was no doubt much indebted for the 
unaffected ease and grace of his manner and attitude, as well 
as for the astonishing readiness and facility of his replies, in 
which not the slightest opening presented by a previous 
adverse orator was forgotten or left unassailed by the brilliant 
arrows of an argumentative acumen never surpassed, and but 
seldom equalled. 

The invincible attachment to truth to which the Duke of 
Wellington, himself one of the truthfulest of men, bore such 
emphatic testimony in the House of Lords, a few days after 
the untimely death of his right honourable friend and col- 
league — " My Lords, in the whole course of my acquaintance 
with Sir Robert Peel, I never knew a man in whose truth 
and justice I had a more lively confidence," — characterised in 
an equal degree young Robert Peel, not merely in disdainful 
avoidance of expressing falsehood, but in open, voluntary con- 
fession of any wrong, neglect, or error of which he might have 
been guilty. The rapidity and ease with which he mas- 
tered the mechanics of education, — grammar, arithmetic, 
languages, &c, — gave earnest of the success he subsequently 
achieved at Harrow and Oxford; and it may be mentioned 
as a proof of the young man's native sagacity and clear- 
sightedness in detecting the true character of social cobwebs, 



254 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

however speciously coloured, to which he was not authorita- 
tively blinded, so to speak, by filial affection and reverence, 
that Mr. Robert Owen, who was upon somewhat intimate 
terms with his father, arising from similarity of views to 
a certain trifling extent with regard to infant labour in 
factories, whilst entertaining a favourable opinion of the 
Baronet's general sagacity, formed a decidedly low estimate 
of the intellectual capacity of his eldest son. It would have 
been strange had he not done so, inasmuch that it could hardly 
be possible that some gleams of the keen intellect which, 
when only partially freed from parental and educational 
mystification, tore the pompous fallacies of parliamentary 
currency-doctors to shreds and tatters, should not have re- 
vealed to the dullest, least observant eyes its irreconcilable 
antagonism with the feeble anility of a mind which had dis- 
covered a panacea for all human ills, in the governments of 
the earth driving its inhabitants into communistic parallelo- 
grams, and banishing Faith from amongst them. 

Robert Peel at Harrow has been partially depicted by his 
form-fellow Lord Byron, who, in remarking upon " Peel, the 
orator and statesman that is, or is to be, of whom they all, 
master and scholars had great hopes," admits that the said 
Peel was his lordship's superior as a scholar, equal to him as 
a declaimer, but in general information inferior to the noble 
lord, an assertion which, viewed by the light of the subsequent 
careers of the celebrated and distinguished Peer and Com- 
moner, seems about as vain-glorious a self-trumpeting as one 
often meets with. His lordship's condescendent air, too, when 
writing of such a man is not a little amusing, and was,, 
perhaps, unconsciously influenced by the habitual tone which 
in those days was held, by the scions of hereditary nobility, 
with regard to the offspring of the cotton parvenus who were 



PEEL. 255 

beginning to settle down upon the ancient seats of learning 
like a cloud. This exclusive haughtiness of feeling was early 
marked and understood by Robert Peel, and gradually in- 
duced in him the cold, unfamiliar, almost repellant reserved- 
ness of manner, forbidding familiarity, which, first adopted as 
a defensive expedient, grew at last to a habit never put off 
in his intercourse with official colleagues, especially when of a 
higher social rank than his own, and only entirely thrown 
aside when in the presence of his family, of a tried and close 
friend like the Duke of Wellington, or when offering a help- 
ing hand, accompanied by kindliest words, to the struggling 
or unfortunate child of genius. From Harrow, Robert Peel 
went to the University of Oxford, where he distanced all com- 
petitors, though amongst them were Mr. Gilbert, afterwards 
Vice-chancellor of the University, — Hampden, since Regius 
Professor of Divinity, and Archbishop Whately, obtaining, 
when he took his degree, double first-class honours, first in 
classics and first in mathematics — the only time in the 
history of the University that such a triumph had been 
achieved. 

The political party then dominant were not unobservant of 
the brilliant promise manifested by " Pitt the younger," as 
Robert Peel, in consequence of his father's garrulous indiscre- 
tions, confidentially as we have seen communicated in later 
life to the House of Commons, began to be called in certain 
coteries. He would, they saw, bring genius, eloquence, 
industry, fresh enthusiasm to a cause seldom more in need 
of such aids, and care was taken to bind him by influences 
which have almost irresistible potency over generous natures 
to the chariot wheels of the Tory and Orange parties. He 
was returned immediately he was eligible to sit in Parliament 
for the borough of Cashel ; his first speech, an eloquent and 



256 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

prophetic denunciation of Bonaparte by the way, was uproar- 
iously applauded by the habitues of the Treasury benches, and 
more substantially rewarded by the offer of the under-secre- 
taryship of the colonies, by the minister, Mr. Perceval, which 
he accepted, not long afterwards exchanging it for the chief 
secretaryship of Ireland, whose Orange magnates courted, 
nattered, feted, toasted the young official in the most extrava- 
gant fashion. Orange Peel they delighted to call him, — and 
even his squeamish prudishness, as it was deemed, in refusing 
to participate in the orgies of Dublin Castle, was excused in 
consideration of his presumedly intractable and unswerving 
adherence to the good old constitutional creed symbolized in 
the shibboleth of the glorious, pious, and immortal memory 
of King William III., by whom these islands were happily 
rescued from popery, slavery, brass money, and wooden shoes. 
It was at this period of Robert Peel's life that his some- 
what ludicrous quarrel with Mr. O'Oonnell occurred. The 
Irish agitator, who had taken in high dudgeon some expres- 
sions uttered by the Irish secretary in the House of Commons 
retorted by saying, that the raw, red-headed stripling squeezed 
out of the workings of a cotton factory, known as Orange 
Peel, would not have dared utter to his, Mr. O'Connell's, face 
what he had stated in the safe security of the House of Com- 
mons. This imputation upon his courage, the youthful 
secretary replied to by a challenge, which was accepted by 
Mr. O'Connell ; but that gentleman's wife, having received 
a hint of what was going on, caused her husband to be 
arrested and bound over to keep the peace towards all the 
king's lieges in Ireland. It was next arranged at Mr. Peel's 
instance that the duel should take place out of the country, 
and the Irish secretary passed safely over to Ostend for that 
purpose. Mr. O'Connell was not so fortunate. He journeyed 



PEEL. 257 

by way of London, and when he arrived there, was ai'rested 
by a warrant from Lord Chief Justice Ellenborough, and 
bound over to keep the peace towards every body, at all 
times, and in all places. It was in reference to this duel 
manque, that Lord Norbury delivered himself of a once much 
quoted jest. " I am afraid, my lord," said Mr. O'Connell, who 
was arguing a matter of importance in one of the four courts 
before that judge, who appeared purposely inattentive, — " I 
am afraid your lordship does not apprehend me." " Oh yes, 
quite so !" quickly rejoined the judge in bitter jest ; " and 
indeed nobody is more easily apprehended than Mr. O'Connell, 
when lie wishes to be!"" 

An opportunity of forging and riveting the final link 
which should bind young Peel for ever to the school of 
politics in which he had been sedulously trained, soon 
occurred, and was eagerly seized upon with that view. The 
representation of the University of Oxford became vacant, 
and although Mr. Canning's long services on the same side 
would seem to have entitled him to the prize — one which he 
had always ardently coveted — his claims were, in some sort, 
contemptuously ignored by the chiefs of the party in favour of 
Robert Peel, upon whom the honour, entirely unsolicited, 
was conferred by acclamation. 

There was no longer any apprehension felt that this young 
and vigorous champion — sprung from the people, and certain 
to be more effective, therefore, in defending exclusive privi- 
lege — would ever suffer himself to be seduced into the 
deceitful paths of moderation and liberality, and for some 
time the harmony of the ranks of intolerance was undis- 
turbed. Gradually, however, the most astute and keen-eyed 
of the party began to see that their leader and champion 
worked uneasily in the glittering fetters by which he had 



258 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

been bound, and which sure enough at last, and one by one, 
were cast off and trampled beneath his feet — personal emi- 
nence and power — patronage almost without limit— the 
leadership of a great and triumphant party, and finally the 
Premiership of Great Britain ! Death surprised him, not, it 
may be said, untimely, for his public life-task closed with 
that, his last and greatest immolation of self, to what the 
voice of Truth, which he had ever willingly obeyed when 
distinctly heard, proclaimed to be his duty, and he expired 
amidst the yet frantic Babel-hubbub with which the crown- 
ing act of his political existence had been received ; a brief, 
unworthy clamour, long since rebuked into silence by the 
myriad voice of a nation in grateful repetition of the trumpet 
sentence which history had already inscribed upon the stain- 
less monumental memory of Robert Peel :■ — " He has left a 
name which will be ever remembered with expressions of 
good-will in the abodes of those of his countrymen whose lot 
it is to labour and to earn their daily bread by the sweat of 
their brow, when they recruit their exhausted strength with 
abundant and untaxed food, the sweeter because no longer 
leavened by a sense of injustice." 




LOUIS PHILIPPE. 



THE opinion which now appears to be generally entertained 
of a monarch whose firm rectitude and super-human 
sagacity were the theme but a few years since of so many 
eloquent tongues and pens, may perhaps be the true one, — 
that Louis Philippe, after all, was a man without convictions, 
who held that to be right which promised to be successful, 
whose vaunted wisdom was at best an agile adroitness in 
dealing with or eluding present and ordinary circumstances, 
and utterly without elevation to foresee an adverse and for- 
midable future, or energy to grapple with it when it came ; 
but a prince born in the purple, and reared in the go-cart 
of a spurious liberalism, contemned by the loyalty of his 
country because of his restless proximity to a throne already 



260 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

shaken by the democracy upon whose shoulders alone he 
could hope to reach it, and instinctively distrusted by that 
democracy for the same reason, and who, moreover, had the 
misfortune to be educated by sentimental Madame De Genlis, 
after the mode suggested by Rousseau's u Emilie," should 
be excused and forgiven much. It may be that a prince of 
great originality and vigour of intellect and strength of pur- 
pose, might have obtained firm footing amidst the shifting 
sands by which the heir of Egalite was environed, upon the 
strong piles of his own resolute will, but this was utterly 
beyond the power of a mind like that of Louis Philippe, — 
flexile, ready, adaptive, keen, but not far-reaching ; quick- 
witted, but not wise, such a man so placed must almost 
needs have been alternately the weed and foam of the vexed 
ocean of circumstances upon which he was cast — never 
wholly engulfed, and borrowing ephemeral elevation and 
brightness from the motion of the capricious elements by 
which he was alike sustained and controlled. To have issued 
triumphant or blameless from such a position required either 
a hero or a saint, and as Louis Philippe, although by no 
means deficient in personal courage, or in the ordinary mora- 
lities of society, was assuredly neither the one nor the other, 
whatever of folly, incompetency, weakness, error, may be 
discerned in his chequered history, — especially during the 
first twenty years of that life of vicissitudes — ought not in 
fairness to be severely judged, save by those who are themselves 
conscious of possessing the heroic or saintly qualities that 
would have carried them victoriously through the arduous 
conflict, — a limitation which must ensure an enormous majo- 
rity of charitable suffrages for the youthful career of which 
the following is a brief and faint, but faithful outline. 

Not only does the contrastive Rembrandt colouring which 



LOUIS PHILIPPE. 261 

pervades the history of Louis Philippe, early display itself, 
but the antagonistic polemics of friends and enemies which 
distort and obscure almost every important incident of his 
life meet us at its very threshold. He was the eldest son, 
writes the courtly historiographer of the Orleans family, of 
Louis-Philippe Joseph d'Orleans and Louise Marie Adelaide 
de Bourbon, daughter of the Due de Penthievre, and was 
born at the Palais Boyal, Paris, on the 6th of October, 1773, 
named Due de Valois, and baptised three days afterwards by 
the Priest- Almoner of the household, in the presence of his 
father, mother, and two valets, though not christened till 
his thirteenth year, when the sponsors were Louis XVL, aud 
his Queen Marie Antoinette. There are grave reasons for 
questioning the authenticity of this pretender's birth, respond 
the fanatics of the elder Bourbon party, who lend eager cre- 
dence to any imputation — the fouler, the more acceptable — 
upon the character of a Duke of Orleans who could vote 
with the regicides of the convention for the death of Louis 
XVI. The child of which the Duchess of Orleans was deli- 
vered on the 6th of October, 1773, was a girl, which, without 
the knowledge of its mother, was exchanged at its birth for 
a boy, the son of one Chiappani, a jailer of Modigliana, a 
village of the Apennines. Tins strange allegation was actively 
sustained in 1823-4, after, it is well to note, Louis Philippe, 
then Duke of Orleans, and sole surviving son of Egalite, had 
mortally offended the partisans of the elder Bourbons by 
propagating doubts of the reality of the widowed. Duchess de 
Berri's accouchement of a son, the present Henry V. of the 
legitimists; and quite a plausible prima-facie case was made 
out in its support. The Duke and Duchess of Orleans, it 
appears, were travelling in the neighbourhood of the Apen- 
nines, in 1773, the lady at the time being in delicate health ; 



262 EXTKAOEDIJTAEY MEN. 

and the Duke, who already contemplated the succession to 
the throne with a wistful and evil eye, was extremely anxious 
for a male child, and a healthier one than his duchess was 
likely to give birth to. An arrangement was accordingly 
entered into by him with Chiappani, to the effect that if the 
jailer's wife, a fine healthy woman, who looked to be confined 
a few days earlier than the duchess, should give birth to a son, 
it was to be forthwith brought to Paris and exchanged for 
the Bourbon offspring, if either a female or a weakly boy. 
The duchess having given birth to a daughter, and Madame 
Chiappani to a robust son, the infamous bargain was consum- 
mated, and the genuine child of the house of Orleans sent off 
by its tiger-hearted father to tend goats in the Apennines ! 
In support of this charming story, a lady known as Maria 
Stella Petronilla, by marriage Baronne de Steinberg, nee 
Joinville, suddenly appeared and claimed to be the daughter 
for whom Chiappanfs son, Louis Philippe, had been substi- 
tuted; armed, moreover, with a solemn record or judgment 
of the august tribunal de Paenza, dated May 29, 1824, — how 
obtained, Heaven, the lady, and the legitimists know best, — 
in vindication of the story substantially as just related. The 
matter created some star in Paris, and Louis Philippe was 
said to be much annoyed thereat, but as the Baronne de 
Steinberg proved to be unmistakably mad in other respects 
than her claim of Bourbon descent, the affair fell through, 
albeit to this day a legitimist, pur sang, believes in the verity 
of the Baronne's narrative as firmly as that Henry V. has an 
indefeasible right to govern the French nation after the good 
old fashion of the ancie?i regime ! 

The Due de Yalois was not, however, the only son of Louis 
Philippe Joseph d'Orleans and his duchess. Two others 
were born to them, — the Dues de Montpensier and de 



LOUIS PHILIPPE. 263 

Beaujolais, and two princesses, one of whom, Marie Adelaide, 
it will be remembered, died a short time only previous to her 
brother's dethronement and exile. The education of the 
Due de Valois was for the first eight years of his life directed 
by the Chevalier Bonard, but the progress made was so little 
satisfactory, that the Duke, his father, determined to place 
him and his brothers under the educational control of 
Madame la Comtesse de Genlis, who had already the prin- 
cesses under her charge at the Chateau de Belle Chasse, situate 
in the garden of the convent of that name, to which it com- 
municated by a covered way. Madame de Genlis appears to 
have been at first somewhat startled by the Duke's proposal, 
but after a few moments' reflection, doubts of her own 
powers adequately to discharge such important functions 
entirely vanished; and being, in addition, exceedingly 
desirous of training up men children after the Rousseau 
model, she accepted his highness's offer, and the King's con- 
sent having been given to the arrangement, — cheerfully, says 
Madame de Genlis, — with pain and reluctance, writes the 
Chevalier Bonard, who was extremely indiguant at being so 
unceremoniously superseded, and by a woman too! Madame 
entered at once upon her duties as " governor," not governess, 
of the Orleans children, for a salary of twelve thousand 
francs per annum, — apartments, board, &c, and a promise of 
the " cordon bleu" when her mission was accomplished. 

The Lady-governor had almost a virgin soil to cultivate in 
the minds of the young princes, wherein nothing but a few 
coarse weeds, which it took even her skilful and vigorous 
hand much time and pains to eradicate, had as yet taken 
root and germinated. "They knew nothing," Madame 
writes; " and M. le Due de Valois, who was eight years old, 
displayed an unheard-of want of application. I began by a 



264 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

few lectures on history, but instead of listening, he stretched 
himself and yawned, and I was strangely surprised at the 
first lecture to see him loll back in the sofa whenever we 
were seated, and place his feet upon the table before us." 
M. le Due de Yalois was immediately placed en penitence, in 
chastisement of so gross an exhibition of ill-breeding and 
tasteless indifference to the lady-lecturer's historical disquisi- 
tions, and from that moment, finding he was under a more 
stringent discipline than that of the Chevalier Bonard, he 
quietly submitted to Madame's " firm but reasonable rule," 
and began to make way with his studies. He was instructed 
by competent masters in Greek, Latin, German, English, 
Italian, Mathematics, and Drawing ; and by the Countess 
herself, in French, Mythology, History, Geography, Botany, 
and Natural History. In addition to these branches of 
learning, Madame de Genlis insisted that, in accordance with 
her adopted theory, the Due de Yalois and his brothers should 
be rendered practical architects, carpenters, gardeners, surgeons, 
and apothecaries, she herself undertaking to preside over 
the study and manipulation of the drugs, which she called 
instructing her pupils in chemistry. The Due de Yalois, now 
Due de Chartres, became by dint of incessant practice upon 
the servants, who vainly remonstrated against such a detest- 
able addition to their duties, tolerably adroit at opening a 
vein, and, with the most amiable intentions in the world, 
he broke the jaw of a boy who was suffering from tooth-ache, 
by way of practice in the science of dental surgery. In 
brick-laying and building generally, the young Duke obtained 
considerable success, but it was as carpenters that he and his 
brother, the Due de Montpensier, best vindicated Madame's 
educational theory, and earned her warmest commendation. 
Upon the occasion of the marriage of a poor peasant-girl, 



LOUIS PHILIPPE. 



265 




the two princes presented her with a large wardrobe and a 
chest of drawers of walnut wood, expressly manufactured by 
themselves, to aid her in commencing housekeeping. Speeches 
by the royal carpenters of course accompanied the gift, and 
•were humbly acknowledged by the rustic recipient, greatly 
to the glorification of the enchanted " governor," who exult- 
ingly remarked, that the Archbishop of Cambrai had indi- 
cated in his " Telemachus" no such efficient education for the 
dauphin of France, as she had decided upon, and triumph- 
antly carried into practice with the Orleans princes. 
■ s 



266 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

The success of Madame de Genlis had, in fact, but one 
drawback, according to her own report, which for a time 
was a very wearisome one, — that of exciting the too pas- 
sionate attachment of the Due de Chartres towards his pre- 
ceptress. " II s'attachoit passion^ment a moi," writes the 
lady, who, being somewhat over a quarter of a century the 
boy's senior, remonstrated with him upon the excessive folly 
of having no eyes, no ears, no attention for any one else 
when she was present'; or as Madame more quaintly expressed 
it, "for putting himself always in her pocket" (se mettre 
toujours dans ma poche). These reproofs merely diminished, 
as was of course intended, the exterior manifestations of her 
pupil's regard, but in nothing diminished its intensity, and 
we shall find that long afterwards, when presented with a 
civic crown in reward of a really meritorious act, he forth- 
with despatched a leaf thereof not to his mother or sister, 
but to Madame, " for without you what should I have been 1" 
which leaf Madame preserved with religious care amongst her 
" relics of the heart." In evident allusion to the admiration 
in which she was regarded by both the Due d'Orleans and 
De Chartres, the countess, when visiting, accompanied by 
her pupil, the tomb of Diana of Poictiers, at Anet, exclaimed 
in her most affecting and impressive manner — "Happy 
woman ! She was beloved alike by the father and the son." 
Interfused with the sickly sentimentality with which Madame 
de Genlis garnished the motley education of the princes, was 
the far more subtle and dangerous, because not so certain 
to be outgrown, sceptical, mock-liberalism which the Due 
de Chartres imbibed from the conversation and example of 
his father, and the political accomplices who were aided by 
him in perverting the justifiable revolt of the French people 
against the hoary despotism which thought to bind the 



LOUIS PHILIPPE. 267 

eighteenth century, in the worn and rusty chains forged in 
the dark ages of the world, to a maniacal insurrection, sub- 
versive of all authority, divine or human, except that of their 
own unreasoning and sanguinary caprice. The intriguing and 
ambitious temper of Louis Philippe Joseph d' Orleans, and 
consequent affectation of political liberality, were strength- 
ened by personal resentment against Louis XVI. for having 
refused to create him an admiral, in recompence of the dis- 
tinguished bravery he was said to have displayed hi the com- 
mand of a French ship of the line in the running fight 
with the van of the British fleet under Keppel, — an engage- 
ment without results, but which the French commander 
announced to be a glorious victory. — or at all events, it 
would have been one, after the hypothetical fashion in which 
M. Thiers and other historians of his nation prove that the 
British land and sea victories should, according to all ride, 
have been defeats, but for certain unfortunate contingencies, 
which certainly never ought to, but somehow or other always 
do, provokingly occur. So persistent and barefaced did the 
disloyal manoeuvres of the Duke of Orleans at length become, 
that his Majesty suggested to his Boyal Highness, in 1787, 
that it would be prudent for him to absent himself from 
France for a while ; and the Duke came over to England. 
During this temporary exile, the Duchess, who was greatly 
dissatisfied with the De Genlis mode of educating her 
children, might, perhaps, have regained some portion of her 
just authority over them, but for her husband's direction 
that, during his absence, Madame should take her pupils on a 
tour through the French provinces. This arrangement was 
carried into effect, and the Orleans family, accompanied, as 
was anticipated, during the first portion of the journey only 
by the Duchess, whose health could not support the fatigue 

s 2 



268 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

of travelling, visited, under the superintendence of the 
Countess de Genlis, Spa, Brittany, and Normandy in succes- 
sion. This excursion was intended as a sort of political 
demonstration on the part of the Orleanist faction, and, 
thanks to the fervid unction with which the Due de Chartres 
played the part of an enthusiastic lover of freedom, and the 
captivating speeches, full of resonant clap-traps upon that 
exhaustless theme, composed by Madame de Genlis, and 
carefully got by heart and declaimed by young Louis Philippe, 
was not an unsuccessful one. At the launching of a ship 
at St. Yalery, a small port of Brittany, of which, after the 
fashion of Catholic countries, the Due de Chartres was god- 
father, and his sister, Marie Adelaide, godmother, the sub- 
ject-matter was the freedom of the seas and liberty of com- 
merce, relieved by graceful allusions to the maritime services 
of the orator's father ; the same, when addressing the muni- 
cipality at Havre de Grace ; but the most taking display 
occurred at Mont St. Michel, in Normandy, on the summit 
of which stood a state-prison-convent, dedicated to the arch- 
angel of that name. 

The ascent, as described by the lady-governor, was a 
toilsome and fatiguing one, but the purpose to be achieved 
amply compensated the labour of accomplishing it. The 
military garrison of the convent-fortress had been long since 
withdrawn, and only monks and some prisoners for debt 
inhabited it at the period of this unexpected visit. The prior 
was very assiduous in conducting the royal party and the 
considerable number of provincial notabilities that accom- 
panied them over the building, and when he intimated that 
the party had seen all, the Due de Chartres asked in a tone of 
surprise where then was the terrible iron cage in which the 
kings of France used to imprison their unhappy victims ? 



LOUIS PHILIPPE. 26 

The prior replied that it was a cage of wood, not of iron, and 
immediately led the way to the dismal cell where it was 
kept. It was in this horrible prison, which did not permit 
the sufferer either to stand upright or lie at length, that the 
grand monarque, as the base parasites of Louis XIV. were 
accustomed to style that tyrannous, remorseless king, impri- 
soned a Dutch editor, by whom his vanity had been ruffled, 
for seventeen years, when death put an end to his tortures. 
The moment the Due de Chartres cast his eyes upon this 
terrific instrument of Bourbon despotism, " a noble and 
generous rage swelled his breast," and in a brief, emphatic 
address he proposed that it should be at once destroyed. 
The monks, though anxious not to offend their princely 
visitors, hesitated at giving the necessary permission for a 
few minutes, chiefly, they said, because of the loss of the 
gratuities which the convent porter received for exhibiting 
the cage to persons curious in such objects. The ardour 
of the Due de Chartres, seconded by the entreaties of 
Madame de Genlis, and the vociferous approbation of the 
numerous spectators, could not be withstood ; the porter, it 
was intimated, could charge for showing where the cage had 
been ; and everything being at length in readiness, a 
sharp axe was placed in the Due de Chartres' hand, his 
youthful highness, after a stirring address which filled the 
eyes of the bystanders with tears of indignant rage, struck 
the first blow, and Louis XIY.'s horrible machine was in a 
few minutes hewn in pieces amidst the loud shouts of every 
one present, monks included, so contagious is the effect of 
a generous impulse, or what has the appearance of one, upon 
the least impressionable natures! In 1830, and a few days 
only after Louis Philippe had vaulted from the Paris barri- 
cades into the vacated throne of France, a deputation from 



L'70 EXTKAO?J)IXA?.Y MOSS. 

town of Avranehes, arrived in Paris to congratulate the 
n-king npon his accession, reminded him in their com- 
plimentary address of the desi ruction of the Mont St. Michel 
cage : " I thank you." replied the monarch, with entire stea- 
diness of tone and countenance, " I thank you for k:.~ 
recalled to my mind what I hare always regarded as one of 
the happiest circumstances in my lite. In that act I gave 
p»roof of my unchanging love of liberty, and of the hatred of 
despotism with which the sight of that terrible rock inspired 
me." 

The provincial progress at length over, Madame de Genlis 
and her pupils returned to Paris, and — alternately residing at 
the Palais Poyal in that city, and Bainey, Belle-Chasse. and 
Saint Leu — resumed their educational pursuits. One mode 
of amusement and instruction sanctioned by the Countess was 
the acting of plays, by herself, the Orleans children, and such 
visitors as chanced to be available for that purpose. They 
were thus engaged at Saint Leu when a breathless messenger 
arrived with the fateful intelligence that the people of Paris 
were preparing to attack the Bastile ! This was on the 14th 
of July, 1 789, and a shout of exultation greeted the announce- 
ment from every Orleanist present, one of whom was so 
eager to participate the anticipated triumph of the populace, 
that he could not wait to change his theatrical dress, but 
hurried off at once, and joined the insurgent and enthusias- 
tic crowd in the character of Polyphemus. Madame de 
Genlis, accompanied by the Dues de Chartres and Montpen- 
sier, was not long behind, and the three witnessed the attack 
and destruction of the hoary sepulchre of broken hearts, from 
Beauniarchaiss garden-terrace on the boulevard Saint Antoine. 
The Due de Chartres watched the progress of the gallant 
struggle with the deepest interest — shouting and hallooing 



LOUIS PHILIPPE. 271 

with fierce excitement as the success of the attack became 
more and more imminent, and the furious assailants pressed 
tumultuously onward, amidst deafening cries of " A bas la 
Bastile !"— " Yive le Due d'Orleans !"— " Yive la liberte !"— 
towards an assured and for ever memorable victory. As soon 
as the conflict had terminated, Madame de Genlis conducted 
the two young princes to the Palais Royal, and there also 
the Due de Chartres displayed his exultation at the popular 
triumph in a marked and vehement manner. Despotism 
had, he said, received a blow, from which it was impossible it 
should ever recover, and a constitutional monarchy like that 
of England — the dream of Mirabeau — was thenceforth an 
irreversible fact in France. 

The tumultuous and fast crimsoning tide of revolution 
soon swept past that great landmark, carrying everybody 
onward — bongre, malgre — in its resistless current ; and at 
Passy the two boy-dukes, with their unavoidable lady- 
governor, witnessed a procession defile past, the character of 
which revealed the doom of the French monarch, however 
constitutionalised, as clearly to discerning eyes as when the 
chief captive in the train was finally delivered into the hands 
of Sampson on the Place de la Revolution — it was the mob- 
and-pike enforced removal of the yet nominal king from 
Versailles to Paris ; and first there passed before the applaud- 
ing dukes and their equally excited and sillier preceptress, 
the national guards, commanded by well-meaning, indecisive 
Lafayette, who still cherished the delusion — daily however 
with less and less confidence — that the free institutions which 
he had seen in tranquil and efficient operation in America, 
and which, rooted in the habits, traditions, and faith of tho 
English settlers there, had been practically in force amongst 
them since the first day the Pilgrim Fathers landed on the 



272 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

rock at New Plymouth, could be transferred and adapted 
to a people cradled and reared in the brutifying atmo- 
sphere of an irresponsible divine-right despotism, by a few- 
sounding proclamations, philosophic dissertations upon the 
rights of man and the concession of universal suffrage 
in the election of the members of the National Assembly. 
Immediately following the civic guards, marched a striking 
illustration of such amiable theories — a tumultuous band 
of ruffians', bearing upon their pike-points the heads of the 
gardes-du-corps who had been slain for presuming to de- 
fend the privacy of the king's palace. Next in that funeral 
procession of the old royalty of France moved on in their 
carriage-prisons, Louis XVI., his queen, brother, sister, and 
children, and the sad cortege was closed by the deputation of 
one hundred members of the National Assembly, sent to 
invite the monarch to take up his permanent abode in his 
good city of Paris. The Due de Chartres, it was noticed with 
approbation or disgust, according to the observer's political 
creed, was incessant in his applause during the whole time 
the motley array was passing ; and was occasionally rewarded 
for his exertions by hearing now and then a stray "Vive le 
Due d'Orleans" — " Vive le Due de Chartres" — faintly mingle 
with the fierce shouts of " A Paris" — " Vive la Nation" — and 
spite of Lafayette's entreaties and unheeded menaces, the 
ominous death-cry, frequently repeated, of " A bas l'Autri- 
chienne 1" 

This compelled removal of the king to Paris had been 
preceded, the reader will remember, and was no doubt some- 
what hastened, by the ill-advised banquet given to the gardes- 
du-corps, at which, in the excitement of wine, and the sud- 
den and unexpected entrance of the beautiful Marie Antoi- 
nette, the assembled guests had torn off and trampled under 
foot the national cockade, and given frantic expression to their 



LOUIS PHILIPPE. 273 

enthusiasm, as the king and queen passed down their ranks, 
in vociferously singing the chivalric and loyal song — 

" Richard ! mon Roi ! 
Tout l'univers t'abandonne." 

This audacious but surely excusable folly of the Gardes- 
du-corps was, as a matter of course, violently denounced in the 
National Assembly, and, equally of course, in the then temper 
of the Paris populace, the most intemperate speakers were the 
most heartily applauded in the people's tribune, and by none 
of its occupants more vehemently than by the Due de Chartres. 
So prominently conspicuous, indeed, were the manifestations 
he indulged in, that two royalist members called the attention 
of the president to his conduct, the only effect of which was, 
according to Louis Philippe's own account of the matter in 
his journal, to induce the young prince to continue his noisy 
demonstrations more vehemently than before, and steadily to 
stare down at the same time the royalist deputies through 
his lorgnette. 

In fact the efforts of the Orleans family to maintain them- 
selves conspicuously in the front ranks of the revolution were 
multifarious and incessant. On the 9th of February, 1790, 
the three brothers, Chartres, Montpensier, and Beaujolais, 
decked out by their father in the uniform of the National 
Guard, presented themselves before the president of the St. 
Roch district of Paris, and requested to take the civic oath. 
The Due de Chartres, who by that time was between sixteen 
and seventeen years of age, was of course the spokesman of 
the occasion, and in reply to the formal questions of the pre- 
sident, made a speech " full of grace and fervour," which the 
bystanders greatly applauded. Excited, perhaps, by the 
cheers his eloquence had elicited, the Due de Chartres, upon 
being presented with his certificate of civism, in which, as 



274 EXTRAORDINARY HEN. 

well as in the president's registry, his not yet abolished titles 
were duly set forth, he drew his pen across them all, except 
the "noble and touching" one of "citizen of Paris," thus con- 
siderably anticipating, as far as himself was concerned, the 
"night of sacrifices," otherwise "the day of dupes," in the 
National Assembly. 

These strange antics in a prince were in a manner crowned 
by his initiation, at his own reiterated request, into the Club 
of Jacobins, on the 2d of November, 1790. He thus records 
the circumstance in his Journal : " I had dined at Mousseaux, 
and on the morrow, my father, who had heard of my anxiety 
to be admitted a member of the Jacobins, requested M. de 
Sillery to propose me. I was received yesterday, and very 
much applauded." This step was strongly opposed by the 
Duchess of Orleans, who was of opinion that if, as the 
Countess de Genlis asserted, — the education of the Due de 
Chartres by the way, as far as that lady was concerned, had 
by this time terminated, — it was essential that the young 
Louis Philippe should learn to make speeches " as they did in 
England," some other mode could be devised for the attain- 
ment of that end than by associating himself with the fero- 
cious Jacobins. Her objections were, however, as we have 
seen, overruled, or rather set at nought; and her ardent son 
accepted, in order more strongly to mark his superiority to 
and contempt for adventitious claims to pre-eminence, the 
humble office of apparitor or door-keeper of the Jacobins, the 
chief duties of which were to open and close the doors, and 
keep dogs and other disturbers or intruders away. He did 
not, however, lack promotion for any great length of time, 
having been about a month after his initiation appointed 
secretary of "the committee of presentations." His zeal, 
indeed, in the cause of democratic equality deserved all the 



LOUIS PHILIPPE. 27.5 

favour which the Jacobins could shew him. He could only 
endure the company at the Palais Royal on the 18th Dec. 
1700, for a very short time, their conversation was so offensive 
in its aristocratic pleasantries ; and on the 5th January, the 
successful representation of a long-since forgotten drama, 
entitled " Despotism Overturned" (Despotisme Benverse), 
threw him into ecstasies. The audience crowned the author, 
and the Due de Chartres could not rest till he had seen the 
man of patriotic genius, and warmly embraced him, with tears ! 
One or two patches of common sense sparkle here and there 
amidst the dull waste of his Journal. Here is one : " January 
13th, 1791, — I went yesterday to the Assembly, where they 
were discussing the tobacco question ; that is to say, if you 
should be permitted or not to be master of your own 
field ; for, can there be anything more unjust than to say to 
a man — e this field is your property, but you shall only sow 
such and such things in it ; and 1 shall have the right to 
come into your grounds — into your house, to see if you have 
planted any tobacco — to see if you have any concealed on 
your premises"? No Frenchman ought to be subjected to such 
an inquisition." At length one of the sweeping reforms 
decreed by the National Assembly reached M. le Due de 
Chartres personally. All colonels absent from their regiments 
were ordered to join forthwith, and as he had been, by the 
grace of Louis XVI., a colonel of dragoons from the day of his 
birth, he was obliged immediately to leave Paris for Vendome, 
where the regiment was stationed. Arrived there, he lost 
no time in visiting the club of Jacobins, affiliated to the 
parent confederation in Paris, and on the 7th August, 1791, 
made the following speech there in reference to the decree 
passed on the previously mentioned night of sacrifices, or day 
of dupes : " You are, no doubt, my friends, informed of the 



276 EXTRAORDINARY HEN. 

decree which suppresses all distinctions and all privileges. 
I hope you have rendered me the justice to believe that I am 
too much the friend of equality not to have applauded that 
decree with transport. I have then abandoned, at the instant, 
and with the greatest pleasure, those frivolous marks of dis- 
tinction to which there has been for so long a time attached 
a consideration due only to merit, and which in the future 
will alone obtain it. Just as much as I disdained distinctions 
which I derived from chance and birth, shall I be proud of 
those which I trust to obtain by meriting them." Great 
applause of course followed this speech, and the honours of 
the sitting were unanimously awarded to Colonel Philippe, 
— -fits Ugalite, — as the new member was thenceforth self- 
designated. 

Colonel Philippe was fortunate enough to obtain one of 
the rewards of merit not long afterwards, by rescuing with 
the help of his coloured servant Edward, a M. Sivret from 
drowning. He describes the incident with natural exultation 
in a letter to Madame de Genlis, from which we gather 
that he had been reading Pope, Metastasio, and Rousseau, 
when feeling somewhat drowsy, he went out to bathe, and at 
some risk, it seems, to his own life, saved that of M. Sivret. In 
his journal he calls it the happiest day of his existence, con- 
gratulates himself that he was born under a happy star, and 
goes to bed well contented. For this action, the municipality 
of Vendome presented him with a civic crown at a public 
audience, a leaf of which he sent off immediately as a souvenir 
to his dear friend the Countess, without whom he would 
have been nothing. The crown itself was left behind when 
the regiment quitted Vendome, but in 1824, when Louis 
Philippe, become Duke of Orleans, was restored to his 
hereditary station and estates, a clever gentleman, of the 



LOUIS PHILIPPE. 277 

name of Musset Bathay, suddenly discovered it or pretended 
to do so, in a corn-loft, — had it regilt and varnished, and 
despatched it, carefully packed up, to his Highness of 
Orleans. But the charm and romance of the thing were past. 
The Duke was not thinking of gilt pasteboard crowns, 
and all that M. Musset Bathay obtained in requital of his 
crafty discovery, after indefatigably reminding Louis Philippe 
during several months of the interesting relic he had been the 
honoured means of rescuing from destruction, was a snuff-box, 
with the Duke's cypher, not in diamonds, engraved upon 
the lid, whereupon M. Musset Bathay, it is said, instantly 
transferred his allegiance to the elder legitimate branch of 
the House of Bourbon, and became one of its most furious 
partisans. 

The advance of the Duke of Brunswick against France 
gave Colonel Philippe an opportunity of displaying his per- 
sonal courage and military zeal in defence of the republic. 
He does not appear to have been at all moved by the horrible 
scenes enacting in Paris. He was made Lieutenant-general 
in September, 1792, the month in which his aunt, the beau- 
tiful Princess de Lamballe, with many hundreds of others, 
was massacred by the Paris populace; the representative 
commissioners having reported " that he had excellent dispo- 
sitions." Louis Philippe had chanced to be on duty as a 
national guard at the Tuileries, when the king was brought 
back from Yarennes, and he is said, upon " legitimate" autho- 
rity, to have exhibited a cruel and unworthy exultation when 
the unfortunate monarch passed by on his way to the Temple 
prison. It is very difficult to believe this, and impossible to 
credit another allegation of the same party, that he aided 
Danton in persuading his father to vote for the death of the 
king. He was no doubt present during the monarch's mock 



278 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

trial, in the strangers' tribune, but his own solemn and often- 
repeated asseveration that he was innocent of the slightest 
complicity with the Duke's crime, must be accepted for truth 
in the absence of anything like impartial evidence to the 
contrary. 

The cannonade of Valmy, and the slight victory of Je- 
mappes, did not enable Dumouriez and his zealous and active 
lieutenant, Louis Philippe, to win over the army to the re- 
storation of a quasi monarchy in the House of Orleans, and 
both at last had a narrow escape from their own troops, in 
getting across the frontiers into Germany. Louis Philippe 
reached the Austrian camp, and had an interview with the 
Archduke Charles, by whom he was very coldly received, 
and presently finding himself in a great strait for want of 
money, he accepted the situation of mathematical tutor, for 
which he was but imperfectly fitted, in the college of 
Pechinau, in the canton of the Grisons, Switzerland, in the 
name of Chabaud, and at a salary of fourteen thousand francs 
per annum. He did not remain there very long, and as soon 
as he could obtain the necessary funds from his relations, he 
embarked, October, 1795, from Hamburgh, on his travels to 
the north of Europe, and subsequently to America. Louis 
Philippe, as king, supplies the interpretation of his youthful 
declamations in favour of liberty and equality, which he who 
runs may read, — and certainly requiring no glossary of mine 
or of others for its accurate comprehension. 




W£T~ 




DR. CHAINING. 



f\F the numerous kindred voices which reach us from 
^ across the Atlantic, breathing the same essential spirit 
as our more immediately own guides and leaders in the con- 
stant and triumphal, though checked and impeded march of 
the English race, to the moral conquest of the manifold 
tyrannies which enchain the minds and manacle the limbs 
of so large a portion of the great human family, there is 
none which speaks with a truer, heartier tone, which appeals 
with greater power to our higher and nobler sympathies 
than that of William Ellery Charming ; — and it is pleasant 
to find one's self, after groping amidst the mires and mean- 



280 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

nesses from out of which many of the extraordinary men 
of the world have attained a lofty position in the self- 
deceptive estimation of the multitude, in the presence of a 
life, the first of whose divinely-written pages are pure and 
beautiful, and distinguished only from the remainder of the 
volume by the fainter illumination of the intellect, which, in 
gradually developing splendour, irradiates the later pages. 
The parentage of this distinguished man was a fortunate 
and honouring one. His father, a descendant of John 
Channing, of Dorsetshire, who early settled in New England, 
was a friend of Washington's, and therefore one of the stout 
and faithful men whose valiant and successful resistance to the 
illegal domination of the British G-overnment has been as 
fruitful in blessings to the land of their forefathers as to that 
of their adoption. He married Lucy Ellery, in 1773, by 
whom he had a numerous family, "William Ellery Channing, 
the third child having been born at Newport, Rhode Island, 
on the 7th April, 1780. In 1777, Mr. Channing was 
appointed attorney-general of his native state, and subse- 
quently he became United States district attorney for Rhode 
Island, both of which offices he held to his death, and dis- 
charged with efficiency and honour. Lucy Ellery, the wife, 
had, however, more to do with the training of the family 
than her busily occupied husband, and she appears to have 
been admirably fitted for the task, both by a quick impulsive 
temperament, and the keen grasp of a shrewd penetrating 
intellect. Small in person, but full of energy and enthu- 
siasm,. — true in thought, speech and deed, — judging of 
things, persons and events as they were, and speaking of them 
by their right names, — she was, out of her family, perhaps 
more respected, and in some instances, feared, than loved. 
" Her affection," writes her son, " was without illusion even 



CHANGING. 281 

as regarded her own children. She recognised unerringly, 
-and with delight, fairness, honesty, genuine uprightness, and 
shrank as by instinct from every thing specious, — the fac- 
titious in character and the plausible in manner." To the 
example of such a mother there can be no doubt William 
Ellery Channing was greatly indebted for the direct, un- 
swerving singleness of mind and purpose by which his life 
was distinguished ; and in other respects, her influence on 
the future of her children was not less permanent and bene- 
ficial. She was so strict a disciplinarian in her household, 
that even in the matter of food she permitted the indulgence 
of no likings, dislikings, or fantasies whatever, accustoming 
her family to be content with such homely fare as the close 
economy which the duty of providing for nine boys and girls 
obliged her to enforce ; and as in the case of another illus- 
trious American, Benjamin Franklin, Dr. Channing himself 
attributed in no slight degree the eminence he attained to 
having had no exigent or luxurious table-tastes to indulge 
in and gratify. The only part of his father's character or 
opinions to which William Ellery Channing reverted with 
pain, was his seeming indifference to African slavery, a 
subject upon which the son could neither speak nor write, 
save in terms of unmitigated abhorrence ; and he held such 
indifference to be more especially wrong in one whose chief 
pride it was to have helped in the vindication of his own 
freedom and that of the white inhabitants of his country 
from the merely political thraldom of the British Govern- 
ment. Mr. Channing had several slaves, whom he certainly 
treated with the sedate, dignitied kindness habitual with 
him; but their degradation from the dignity of human 
beings to the brute condition of slave-chattels seemed never 
to cross his mind, or at any rate did not perceptibly disturb 

T 



282 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

his conscience, nor strike him in the least by the ludicrous- 
commentary presented by such a state of things to his own 
fervid and eloquent assertion of the indefeasible right of 
every man to the blessings of freedom and self-government. 
At her husband's death in 1773, Mrs. Channing, to the great 
joy of her son, at once gave the slaves their freedom. 

Both parents appear to have entertained a strong presenti- 
ment of William Ellery's future eminence. " We expect 
much from our son William," Mrs. Channing, though by no 
means used to complimentary speeches, one day remarked; 
and the never-forgotten words, overheard by the boy, were 
ever afterwards a spur to renewed exertion whenever the 
spirit of the man grew faint and weary. He was a hand- 
some boy, "with brilliant eyes, ruddy cheeks, and bright 
brown hair ;" but his mental advantages were not quite 
so early disclosed. He had been placed, upon leaving the 
woman's school at which he had acquired the first rudiments 
of education, at Mr. Rogers's seminary in Newport, where his 
progress was not for a time considered entirely satisfactory. 
" Come, William," exclaimed a clerk in his father's office, 
after witnessing a jobation inflicted upon the lad for hi& 
naptitude to the study of the dead languages, — " Come, 
William, they say you're a fool, but I know better. Bring 
me your grammar, and I'll soon teach you Latin." This 
apparent dulness was not long in wearing off, but cliaracter 
was much earlier developed in the boy than the faculty of 
acquiring words and otherwise mastering the mechanics of 
education. This was notably observable in regard to his. 
detestation of every form and species of oppression and cruelty 
and his lofty sense of the dignity of human nature, and more 
especially of the sacredness of woman. " Thank G-od," he 
writes, " I can say I never killed a bird ;" and he goes on to 



CHANNING. 



283 




relate an anecdote which places his tender-kindliness of dis- 
position in a very striking light. He found a nest of newly- 
hatched birds in his father's field ; there was no down even 
upon them, and they opened their tiny bills as if in suppli- 
cation for food. This he eagerly supplied, visiting them 
regularly immediately school was over ; and they were almost 
ready to fly, when he one day found them all killed, and the 
nest and grass red with their blood. The mother was perched 
upon a tree, the father upon a wall, and the child's imagina- 
tion was so excited by the idea that they reproached him for 

t 2 



284 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

the slaughter of their little ones, and that he could never make 
them understand he was innocent of the cruel deed, that he 
burst into a passion of tears, and it was weeks before he 
recovered his tranquillity of mind, and ceased to be haunted 
by the accusing looks of the parent-birds. Flogging of boys 
in school he held in detestation, not from any dread of it on 
his own account, but for the indignity which, in his view, it 
inflicted upon humanity. * "What ! strike a man I " was the 
indignant exclamation which broke from him in after life, 
in rebuke of the use of the whip in the punishment of slaves; 
and he frequently quoted with admiration an illustration, as he 
called it, " of a great heart in combination with small power," 
of a little boy at school striving to shield a much bigger one in 
his arms. The only time young Channing was known to fight, 
was upon hearing of a much stouter lad than himself having 
beaten one a great deal weaker and smaller, whereupon he 
incontinently sought out the big bully, and soundly thrashed 
him in his turn. Some idea of his early and chivalric 
reverence for women may be derived from what he himself 
remarked in reply to an observation relative to the delight 
and admiration he had been expressing for a young girl who 
had just left the room. "She brings to mind," says the 
doctor, " the days of her mother, when I saw her steal softly 
out of the school unnoticed by the mistress, and watched her 
skip down the street, her bright hair floating in the wind, 
and looking, oh so beautiful! as she laughed gaily at the 
less successful companions she had left behind. I have a 
clearer notion of the bliss of a seraph in heaven now, than 
I had then of the joyous spirit which buoyed up that young 
form." At the age of twelve, William Ellery Channing was 
sent to New London to prepare for college under the care 
and instruction of his uncle, the Reverend Henry Channing, 



CHANGING. 285 

and in 1794, the year subsequent to his father's decease, he 
entered Harvard College, Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he 
graduated with distinguished success, and left it thoroughly 
accomplished for the great battle of life, in which he was 
eager to engage, though in what capacity he was as yet unde- 
termined. In politics he had early recovered from the first 
fever of admiration which the French revolution excited 
in America; and when at college, he was the constant and 
eloquent denouncer of French systems, French opinions, 
French propagandisms. He induced the students to join 
in an address of gratulation to President Adams, the repre- 
sentative and champion of the federal anti-Gallican party; 
and the oration with which he closed his academical career 
was an impetuous denunciation of the doctrines of the 
French republicans, which he said " were diseasing the imagi- 
nation and unsettling the minds of men everywhere." 

It is, however, in the peculiar and precocious development 
of the religious element in William Ellery Channing's charac- 
ter, that interest chiefly attaches in his early life. Of his 
peculiar views of the doctrines of Christianity I can have 
nothing to say, but assuredly few men have been more deeply 
imbued than he, with what most men understand by the 
essential spirit of the religion of sorrow, of faith, and love. 
His father was the main pillar of a religious society in New- 
port, Rhode Island; his mother and aunt were very pious 
women; family worship was a daily and never neglected 
practice ; and the lad himself acquired, by his fondness for 
preaching to any knot of hearers he could persuade to listen 
to him, the title of " the little minister." The eloquent con- 
versation of Dr. Stiles, afterwards president of Yale college, 
who sometimes visited at his father's house, greatly impressed 
him, as did the more homely predications of Father Thurston, 



286 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

a Baptist minister, a cooper, and so steadfast a disciple of tem- 
perance, that although hogsheads and barrels were in great 
request for ships engaged in the whaling trade, he refused to 
supply them with any thing but pails. The original and 
inquisitive intellect of the boy, however, could not be per- 
manently restrained by the formulas of orthodoxy, dictated 
by authority, however respected and venerable; and a cir- 
cumstance occurred in his ninth year, which in its results 
revealed the distance that already mentally separated him 
from prevalent religious opinion. He went with his father 
to hear a famous preacher, whose discourse was fearfully elo- 
quent of the unutterable agony awaiting sinners in the next 
world. Little Channing was horror-struck, and it seemed to 
him that persons must be insane to waste one moment of a 
fleeting life in any other effort than assuring themselves 
against so tremendous a doom. Upon coming out of chapel, 
some one observed to his father, who readily agreed in the 
remark, " that it was sound doctrine they had been listening 
to!" "It's all true then," groaned the boy, but whilst riding 
home in the chaise, he eagerly watched his father's counte- 
nance and manner, in the hope of discovering some intimation 
that a figurative meaning attached to the minister's denun- 
ciations. By and by his father whistled ; a flush of hope 
warmed the sickness of the boy's heart, and when upon 
arriving home, his father took up a newspaper and began to 
read it as coolly and calmly as ever, an immense black load 
seemed to lift itself from the son's mind, and the literality 
of the famous preacher's exposition ceased to bewilder and 
distress him. 

This searching, and for a time restless spirit of inquiry, 
led "William Ellery Channing, as his years ripened, into 
various paths of theoretic philosophy. Locke, Reid, Hume, 



CHAINING. 287 

Priestley, and Price, were alternately his unsatisfactory 
preceptors, with the exception of Price, who rescued him 
from the more transparent of the Locke fallacies, by opening 
up a glimpse of the transcendental philosophy of Kant, 
in the " German Expositor." Thenceforth Channing always 
wrote the words, Love, Right, &c. with a capital. The 
circumstances attending, not his intellectual credence of 
the truths of Christianity, but his perception of their 
individual application to himself, were interesting. He 
was taking a quiet walk across meadows, with " Hutchinson 
on Self-sacrifice " in his hand, and occasionally looking up 
to gaze at the Brooklyn hills in the distance, when suddenly, 
he says, it flashed upon him that those two words, Self- 
sacrifice, comprised the whole heart of the mystery, and 
thenceforth they formed " the fountain light of all his days, 
the master light of all his seeing." A vivid gleam is thrown 
upon his devotion to the ideality of women, by its instantly 
occurring to him that he should immediately confide the 
emotions winch agitated him, by letter, to his cousin, Ruth 
Gibbs, many years afterwards his wife, — but after partly 
accomplishing the task, the fear of incurring ridicule stayed 
his hand, and the letter remained unfinished. 

From this moment there was no longer any pause or hesi- 
tation in the life-career of Charming, and, turning neither to 
the right nor to the left, he pressed forward in what he con- 
sidered to be the path of duty, encountering and fearlessly 
opposing himself, during its progress, to injustice, selfishness, 
oppression, in whichever of their Proteus shapes they pre- 
sented themselves, and that too with a success and power that 
have immortalized his name. He sank to his final rest, tran- 
quilly as a wearied child, on the 2nd of October, 1842, in the 
full possession of his faculties, and in perfect faith and peace. 



288 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 

The Sermon on the Mount had been read to him, and he 
whispered, upon unveiling for the last time his clear calm 
eyes, " that he had received many messages from the spirit." 
The day was drawing to a close ; and as the light faded, he 
motioned that the window-curtain should be withdrawn. 
This was done, and he continued to gaze over the far- 
stretching woods, meadows and valleys, towards the setting 
sun, which, from his purple and crimson clad throne, em- 
braced the landscape with a golden smile, — and so gazing, 
William Ellery Channing fell asleep. 




INDEX. 



ANGELO, MICHAEL. 

His birth and parentage, 9 — His early genius, 10 — His intimacy with 
Francesco Granacci, 10 — His horoscope cast, to dissuade him from painting, 
10 — Commences his studies with Dominico and David Ghirlandia, 12 — His 
partiality for devotional subjects, 12 — His reply to Torregiano, 13 — 
Frequents Lorenzo de Medici's gardens, 13 — His experiment with a 
sculptured fawn, 14 — He is taken under Lorenzo de Medici's protection, 14 
— Proceeds to Florence, and thence to Bologna, 15 — Finishes the church 
of St. Peter at Rome, 16 — Builds fortifications at Florence, 16. 



BONAPARTE, NAPOLEON. 

The Bonaparte family, driven from Tuscany, take refuge in Corsica, IOC — 
Charles Bonaparte, the father of Napoleon, and Letitia Eamolina, his 
heroic wife, 196, 197 — Napoleon's birth at Ajaccio, 19S — Early indication 
of great mental power and indomitable will, 19S — His favourite plaything 
a cannon, 19S— Napoleon, a Frenchman by birth, 19S — His letterto Paoli, 
199 — Napoleon's grotto, 199 — His attachment to Paoli, and hatred of 
Frenchmen, 200— He enters the military school of Brienne, 200 — His 
personal appearance, 200, 201 — M. de Keralso's report on Napoleon, 201 — 
Napoleon's military aptitude and predisposition, 202 — The snow fortifi- 
cations, 202 — The undermining of the wall, 202 — Napoleon leaves Brienne 
for Paris in 17S4, 203 — He enters the regiment of La Fere, as second 
lieutenant in 17S5, 204 — Napoleon's illogical mode of reasoning, 205 — He 
commences a "History of Corsica," 205 — His contempt of the mob, 



290 INDEX. 

206 — His ferocious pamphlet against Butafuco, 20G— 208 — He obtains a 
captaincy in the regiment of Grenoble, 208 — He fights against Corsica and 
Paoli, 208, 209 — He is summoned to Toulon, 209 — Summary of his cha- 
racter, 209, 210. 

JBURNS, ROBERT. 

Neglected genius,158, 159 — William Burns tbe Kincardineshire gardener, 
160 — His high moral character, 160, 161 — His wife, Agnes Brown, 161 — 
Birth of Robert Burns, in 1759, 161 — His early acquaintance with ballads 
by means of his mother and Betty Davidson, 161 — His education, 162 — 
Removal of the family to Mount Oliphant, 162 — Burns, a farm labourer, 
162 — He studies French with Mr. John Murdoch, 163 — His fruitless 
attempt to learn Latin, 164 — Nelly Kilpatrick, 164, 166 — Burns' books, 
164, 165 — Departure for Lochlea, 167— Burns' talent for lovemaking, 
167, 16S — He attends a dancing school, 169 — Kirkoswald and Peggy 
Thompson, 169, 170 — Ellinor Begbie, 171— Burns becomes a freemason, 
171 — He turns flax-dresser, 171 — Death of his father, 172, ^173— Burns's 
genius, 173, 174. 

3YRON, LORD. 

Byron's illustrious ancestors, 211 — Their martial deeds, 211, 212 — Byron's 
grandfather tried for murder and acquitted, 213 — Captain Byron and 
the Marchioness of Carmarthen, 213, 214 — Captain Byron's marriage with 
Augusta Gordon, 214 — Byron's birth in Holies-street, January 22nd, 1788, 
215 — Captain Byron's heartless conduct, 215 — Byron's unhappy childhood, 
216 — Sent to school at Aberdeen,216 — Studies with Mr. Boss andMr. Pater- 
son, 216 — Admitted into the Free Grammar School of Aberdeen, 216 — Suc- 
ceeds to the title, 216, 217 — His exultation, 217 — Goes to reside with his 
mother atNewstead Abbey, 217 — Mrs. Byron receives a pension from George 
IH., 217 — Byron's regret at his lameness, 217, 218 — His fits of silent passion, 
218 — His nurse Mary Gray, and Dr. Pigot, 2 IS — His childish love for JIary 
Duff, 219 — His real attachment to Miss Chaworth, 220 — His pugnacious 
disposition at school, 221 — Dilapidated condition of Newstead Abbey, 221 
— Byron's lameness partially cured, 221 — Byron at Harrow, 222 — His recol- 
lections of Sir R. Peel, 222 — His stay at Cheltenham in 1S01, 223 — Miss 
Parker, 223— Byron's love for Miss Chaworth, 223, 226 — His rage at her 
indifference, 226 — His departure for Cambridge, 227 — Quarrels with his 
mother, 227. 



INDEX. 291 



CHANN1NG, DR. 



Character of Charming, 279, 2S0 — His parentage, 280 — Channing's 
mother, 280, 281 — His abhorrence of slavery, 281 — His early schooling at 
Mr. Rogers's in Newport, 282 — His apparent inaptitude for learning, 2S2 — 
Hie detestation of cruelty and oppression, 2 S3 — He enters Harvard Col- 
lege, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 284 — Graduates with honours, 284 — His 
religious views, 284,285 — His mind awakened by a sermon, 285 — His phi- 
losophic readings, 286— His death in 1S42, 287. 

CROMWELL, OLIVER. 

Fables circulated relative to Cromwell's early life, 41 — His birth and 
lineage, 42 — Milton's opinion on the subject, 42 — Cromwell's father allied 
to the Scottish royal family, 43 — His birth at Huntingdon, 43 — His 
mother's portrait at Hitchinbrook, 43 — His early character, boisterous and 
pugnacious, 43 — Saved from drowning by the Rev. Mr. Johnson, 43 — 
Anecdote of Cromwell and the monkey, 44 — Cromwell and his mother, 
44 — Instances related to prove Cromwell a born regicide, 45 — Lord 
Clarendon's belief that his ambition was stimulated by supernatural agency, 
45 — Dramatic entertainment at Huntingdon free school, and Cromwell's 
ambition, 46 — His pugilistic encounter with Prince Charles, 47 — He enters 
Sussex College, Cambridge, in April 1616, 47 — Returns to Huntingdon the 
following year, 47 — His character at the University, 48 — Milton's defence 
of his want of application, 48 — Proceeds to London, 4S — Assertions of 
revilers concerning his depraved character, 49 — John Hampden's opinion 
of Cromwell, 49 — His marriage with Elizabeth, daughter of Sir John 
Bourchier, 49. 

FRANKLIN, BENJAMIN. 

Franklin's humble origin contrasted with his subsequent high position, 
89, 90— His birth in 1706, 90 — His mother, Abiah Folger, 90, 91 — His 
ancestry, 91 — His education at a grammar-school, and at Mr. Brownwell's 
91, 92 — Sent to a soap-boiler's, 92 — Economy of his father's household, 93 — 
Franklin apprenticed to a printer, 93 — His first attempts at authorship, 94 
— His love of reading, 94 — His brother's newspaper scheme, 95 — The pro- 
prietor arrested and imprisoned, 95 — Franklin's quarrel with his brother 
and flight to New York and Philadelphia, 96 — Lodges at Mr. Read's house, 
98 — Sir TV. Keith and his patronage, 9S — Franklin's visit to Boston, 9S, 99 



INDEX. 

— His return to Philadelphia with Collins, 100 — Mr. Yemon's money, 
100, 101 — Sir William Keith's delusive proposition, 101 — Franklin departs 
for England, 101 — Discovers Keith's duplicity, 102 — Obtains employment 
of Mr. Palmer, 102 — Reflections on Franklin's character, 102, 103. 

LAWRENCE, SIR THOMAS. 

Lawrence's first performances in art, in his father's taproom, 175, 177 — 
His birth at Bristol in 1769, 177— His father's repeated failures, 177, 178 — 
Early manifestations of extraordinary genius, 17S — His visits to Corsbam 
House, 179 — His talent at copying pictures, ISO — Barrington's opinion of 
him, 180, 181 — He is taken by his father to Oxford and to Bath, ISO— His 
success, ISO — His painting of Mrs. Siddons, as " Zara," 181 — His desire to 
become an actor, 181, 182 — His father's stratagem of a " Rehearsal," 182 
— He arrives in London, 183 — Attends the Academy as a student, 1S3 — His 
first interview with Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1S3 — His subsequent success and 
fame, 184. 

LOUIS PHILIPPE. 

Character of Louis Philippe, 259, 260 — His birth and baptism, 261 — 
Slanders circulated by the elder Bourbon party concerning his birth, 261, 
262 — His early education under Chevalier Bonard, and subsequently under 
Madame de Genlis, 263, 264 — His attempts at surgery, 264 — Louis 
Philippe Egalite, and his affectation of political liberality, 2 6 7 — His tem- 
porary exile, 267 — Tour of the Princes through Spain, Brittany, and 
Normandy, 268 — Great display of patriotism at Mont St. Michel, in Nor- 
mandy, 268, 269— Demolition of the Wooden Cage, 269— Destruction of 
the Bastile, 270, 271 — Removal of Louis XVI. from Versailles to Paris, 271 
— The Banquet to the " Gardes du Corps," 273 — Louis Philippe and his 
Brothers take the Civic Oath, 273 — He joins the Jacobins' Club, 274 — His 
Journal, 275 — He is required to rejoin his Regiment at Vendome, 275 — 
Saves a man from drowning, 276 — Is presented with a civic crown, 276, 277 
— Created a Lieutenant-General in Sept. 1792, 277 — He escapes from 
France, 278 — Becomes mathematical tutor at Rechinau in Switzerland, 278 
— Embarks for the north of Europe, 278. 

LUTHER, MARTIN. 

Born of peasant parents, at Eisleben, November 10th, 1483, 19 — 
Baptised at Mansfield, sent to school at Mansfield, then at Magdeburgh, 



INDEX. 293 

Eisenach, and Erfurth, 21 — Dame Ursula Scheiveicken, 21 — His love for 
music, 21 — Sings in the streets for bread, 21, 22 — His necessitous condition, 
22 — Assisted by Conrad's wife, 22 — Steingel's story of Luther's adventure 
at Erfurth, 24 — Quits Eisenach for Erfurthin 1501, 25 — His character, and 
rude, boisterous manner, 25 — His determination to become a monk, 
26 — Enters a convent at Erfurth, 2G — procures a copy of the New 
Testament, 2G. 



MARLBOROUGH, THE DUKE OF. 

National calamities at the period of the Restoration, G9 — Ancestry of 
John Churchill, 70 — His birth, and baptism by Matthew Drake, 70 — He 
becomes page to the Duke of York, 71 — His education at St. Paul's 
school, 71 — His partiality for the study of " Yegetius de re Militari," 71 — 
Obtains from the Duke of York an ensigncy in the foot guards, 71— The 
Duchess of Cleveland's partiality for him, 73 — He embarks for Africa to 
assist in the defence of Tangiers, 73 — His exploits during the campaign, 73 
— Recalled by the Duke of York, 75 — His sister becomes the Duke of 
York's mistress, 75 — Churchill's promotion, 75 — He distinguishes himself 
at the siege of Niemugen, 75 — Turenne's wager, 7G — Reflections on his 
character, 7G — His marriage with Sarah Jennings, 76 — Similarity of his 
character with that of Bacon, 7G, 77. 



MIRABEAU. 

Mirabeau's power over the passions of the French, 104 — Hopes enter- 
tained that he would effect a reconciliation between Louis XYI. and his 
people, 105 — Patrician rank of the Riquetti family, 10C — Azza Riquetti's 
banishment from Tuscany in 1269, 106 — Victor Mirabeau, the "friend of 
man," father of the orator, 10C— His court influence, 106— His "Epheme- 
rides," and "Lecons Economiques" — Victor Mirabeau's marriage with 
Marie Cenevieve de Vassen, 107 — His mistress Eleonore le Pailly, 108 — 
Mirabeau's early days, 108 — His ugliness increased by a fit of the small- 
pox, 1 OS— Ill-treatment of his mother by her husband, 10 S— Mirabeau's 
tutor, M. Poisson, 10S — Mirabeau's energy and warm-heartedness, 109 — 
His charitable disposition, 109— Neglect of religious culture, 109— His 
confirmation, 109, 110— Goes to Taris to a military school, 111 — Indulges 
in gambling and dissipation, 111— His father's threat, 111 — He joins the 
regiment of Royal Comtois, 111— Successfully rivals the colonel, 111, 112 



294 INDEX. 

— Imprisoned at Rhe by his father's means, 172 — He proceeds to Corsica, 
112 — Quits the service in disgust, 112, 113 — Mirabeau's ill-regulated mind, 
113 — His death, 113, 114— His last words, 114— His funeral, 115. 



MOLIERE, JEAN-BAPTISTE POQUELIN DE. 

His birth, 51 — Voltaire's criticism on his works, 51 — His parents 
upholsterers in the Rue St. Honore, 52 — He becomes "valet tapissier " to 
Louis XIII., 52 — His powers of observation and mimicry, 52, 53 — His 
grandfather takes him to the theatrical performances at the Hotel Bourgogne, 
53 — Effect of these visits on his future career, 54 — Sent to the College of 
Clermont, thence to the Jesuits' College, 54 — He obtains the patronage of 
the Prince of Conti, and is introduced to Gassendi, 54 — His friendship with 
Brenier, 54 — His supposed scepticism, 54 — He attends Louis XIV. to 
Karbonne, and witnesses the execution of Cinq Mars, and de Thou, 55 — 
Joins a company of comedians, 55 — His unfortunate marriage, 55 — 
Remarks on the genius and writings of Moliere, 56. 



MOZART. 

Reflections on precocious development of mental power, 116 — Mozart's 
certificate of baptism, 117 — His father, " Vize-Kapellmeister" of the 
prince-bishop's chapel, a musician of some repute, 117 — Mozart's affec- 
tionate disposition during childhood, 117 — His early musical education and 
extraordinary capacity for music and mathematics, US — His first concerto 
for the harpsichord, IIS, 119 — He is taken by his father to Munich and 
Vienna, 120 — Mozart and Marie Antoinette, 120, 121 — He is taken to Paris, 
121 — M. Grimm's account of his performance, 121 — Mozart's reply to 
Madame de Pompadour, 121 — His compositions at the age of seven, 121 — His 
visit to London in 1764, 121, 122 — Daines Barrington's "account" of him, 
published in the "Philosophical Transactions," 122 — Bach's admiration of 
his talent, 122 — Visits Holland, 123 — His illness, 123 — His return to 
Salsbourg, 123 — Mozart's performance on the violin, 123, 124 — His first 
opera, " La Finta Simplice," 124 — Becomes a member of the Philharmonic 
Academies of Bologna and Naples, 125 — His extraordinarily retentive 
memory, 125 — The "Miserere" by Allegri, 125— His opera " Mithridates, 
King of Pontus," 126 — His opera "La Bella Finta Guardinera,"126 — His 
early decease, 126. 



index. 295 



NELSON. 



Parallel between Nelson and Wellington, 142 — Nelson's childhood, his 
weakly constitution, 143 — Obtains a naval appointment through Captain 
Suckling, 143 — Suckling's reply to the letter of Nelson's father, 144— 
Anecdotes of Nelson's school -days, his fearless disposition, 144,145 — The 
"pear-tree exploit," 146, 147 — Nelson summoned to join the " Raisonnable" 
off Chatham, 177S, 147 — His disconsolate condition on board, 14S — Nelson 
enters the merchant service, 148 — Is received on board the " Triumph" 
guardship, 149 — Goes on a voyage of discovery in the "Carcass," 149 — 
Nelson's adventure with the " Polar Bear," 150, 151 — Sent home invalided 
in the "Dolphin," 151 — His despondency, and subsequent resolution, 151 — 
Serves as acting lieutenant in the " Worcester," 151 — Passes his examina- 
tion, 152 — Is appointed to the "Lowestoffe," 152 — Boards a prize in a 
storm, 152 — He obtains the command of the "Little Lucy," 152 — Is ap- 
pointed to the " Bagdad," and placed in command of Fort Charles, 153 — The 
disastrous expedition to the Gulf of Mexico in 1780, 153, 154 — Nelson's 
escape from a serpent, 154 — His activity and energy, 155 — Fearful mor- 
tality, 155 — Nelson's return to Jamaica, 155 — He is appointed to the 
"Albemarle ;" his unselfish devotion to Ins country, 150, 157. 

PASCAL, BLAISE. 

His birth at Auvergne, 57 — Death of his mother, 57 — His father retires 
from his profession to superintend the education of Blaise, 58 — Questions 
agitated during Pascal's boyhood, 58, 59 — His education, 60 — His intelli- 
gence and acute mental powers, 60 — His anxiety to study geometry, 61 — 
Pascal's study, 62 — He is discovered by his father drawing geometrical 
figures with charcoal, 62, 63 — Begins to study geometry systematically, 64 
— His paper on conic sections, 64 — Descartes' incredulity respecting his 
performance, 64 — Pascal's father compelled to flee to Auvergne, 65 — The 
reason of his flight, 65 — The Duchess d ' Aiquillon's scheme for his pardon, 
65, 6G — Pascal's calculating machine, 66, 67 — Remarks on the character 
of Pascal, 67, 6S— His "Thoughts," 68. 

PEEL, SIR ROBERT. 

Mr. Peel, of Fishland, Blackburn, and his schemes for printing calico, 
245, 246 — He erects weaving and printing works, at Brookside, near 
Blackburn, 246 — Robert Peel enters into partnership with Yates, and esta- 



2% INDEX. 

blishes works for calico-printing, cotton spinning and weaving, 247— Mar- 
riage of R. Peel with Miss Yates, 247— Birth of Sir Robert Peel, 248— His 
father's admiration of Pitt, 249 — The Bury Volunteers, 251 — Sir Robert's 
early training at declamation, 252, 253 — Wellington's opinion of Peel's 
truthfulness, 253 — Byron's vain-glorious estimate of Peel's abilities, 254, 
255 — His brilliant career at Oxford, 255 — Enters Parliament for the 
Borough of Cashel, 256 — Accepts the Chief Secretaryship for Ireland, 256 
— Quarrel with O'Connell, 256 — He is returned for Oxford, 257— Conclud- 
ing remarks, 258. 

PETER THE GREAT. 

State of Muscovy at the period of Peter's birth, 78 — The Boyards and 
their despotic sway, 79 — Peter's birth, 79 — His father's two marriages, SO 
— His sister Sophia and her regency, SO, 81 — Death of his brother Fedor, 
and intrigues of Sophia, 81 — Danger of Peter and his mother the Czarina 
Natalie, 81, 82 — Their flight, S2, S3 — Natalie's happy expedient, 83 — 
Renewal of Sophia's regency, 85 — Intrigues of the Princess Sophia, 86 — 
Energy and sagacity of Peter, 86 — His intimacy with LeFort and Gordon, 
86 — His marriage, 87— Sophia's usurpation and defeat, 88. 

ROMILLY, SIR S. 

Romilly's autobiography, 127 — his marriage with Anne Garbet, in 1798, 
128 — Lady Romilly's character, as described by her husband, 128 — Sir S. 
Romilly's ancestry, 129 — His grandfather, a French Protestant under Louis 
XIV., emigrates to London, 130 — Becomes a wax-bleacher and dies in 
poverty, J 30 — Romilly's father apprenticed to a jeweller, 131 — Marries 
Mademoiselle Garnault, and commences business in London, 131 — Domestic 
bereavements, 131 — Removal to Marylebone, 132 — Romilly's first years, 
132 — His attachment to Mary Evans, 132 — His mind disturbed by ghost 
stories and tales of murder, 132, 133 — His first schooling at Flach's, 133 — 
His translation of Virgil, 134, 135 — He leaves school, and follows his father's 
business, 135' — A legacy devoted to the purchase of a sworn Chancery 
clerkship, 135 — He becomes the pupil of Michael Lally, 136 — Benevolence 
and charity of Romilly's father, 136 — Samuel's filial affection and pensive 
disposition, 137 — Randolph Greenway and his attachment, 137, 138 — 
Catherine Romilly marries M. Roget, 138 — Death of Greenway, 139 — 
Romilly is called to the bar, 140 — His exertions to reform the criminal 
code, 140— His kindness to Mary Evans and her husband, 141. 



INDEX. 297 

SHAKSPERE, WILLIAM. 

The genius of Shakspere, 28, 29 — Diversity of characters in his plays 
28 — Fallacies concerning his life, 29 — His baptism, 30 — His mother a 
descendant of Sir John Arden, 30 — Disputes concerning his father's pro- 
fession, 30, 31 — Dr. Farmer's criticism, 31 — Shakspere's father chief bailiff of 
Stratford in 1568, 31 — Becomes reduced in circumstances, 32 — Incurs 
penalties by not attending church, 33 — Shakspere educated at the Free 
Grammar School of Stratford, 34 — Queen Elizabeth's visit to Kenilworth 
Castle, 34 — Johnson's dictum concerning Shakspere, 35 — Shakspere's crea- 
tive faculty, 35 — His sympathy with country life, 36 — Sir Thomas Lucy's 
deer, 36 — R. Davis's opinion of Shakspere's poaching propensities, 36 — 
Falls in love with Anne Hathaway at Shottery, 37 — Marries her, 3S — His 
daughter Susannah born, 3S — Leaves Stratford for London, 39 — Birth of his 
twin children, Hamet and Judith, 39 — De Quincy's remarks on Shakspere's 
marriage, 39 — "The brown bed," 39 — Shakspere's humble occupation on 
reaching London, 40 — He attains to eminence and fortune, 40 — Concluding 
remarks on his works, 40. 

WELLINGTON. 

Wellington's birth at Dungan Castle in Ireland, 228 — Prospect of con- 
tinued peace in 1769 — Breaking out of the American War, 230 — Welling- 
ton's Plantagenet blood, 231 — His descent from King Henry I., 231 — His 
Saxon genealogy, 232 — Musical talent of the Earls of Mornington, 233 — 
Wellington's English education neglected, 233 — His school days at 
Mr. Ganer's, at Chelsea, 234, 2 35— The fight for marbles, 236— Death of the 
Earl of Mornington, 23fi — Wellington at Eton, 237 — Trick played upon 
Lady Dungannon, 237 — Wellington's patriotism and soldierly spirit, 238, 
239 — He studies for two years at Douay College, Angers, 238, 239 — 
Obtains an ensign's commission, 239 — His debts, and the shoemaker's loan, 
239, 240 — His speeches in Parliament, 240, 241 — He embarks for Holland, 
241 — Reflections on Wellington's character, 241, 242. 

WILKIE. 

Wilkie's father, and his frequent marriages, 185, 1S6— Wilkie's dulness 
in early youth, 1S7 — His early devotion to art, and numerous sketches, 
18S — His mechanical aptitude, 1S9 — He is sent to Edinburgh in 1799, to 
study at the trustees' academy, 189 — His introduction to Mr. George 
Thompson, 1S9 — He obtains admission through the Earl of Leven, 191 — 
His industry and application, 191 — Gains a prize for his " Callisto at the 
Bath of Diana," 192— He returns to Cults in 1S04.192— Proceeds to London 
in May, 1805, 193— Paints the " Village Politicians," 193. 
U 



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Life of Napoleon Buonaparte. 

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that class. * * * Miss Bauer has performed her task of compiler and translator 
in the most praiseworthy manner." — Watchman. 

" The writings and labours of the illustrious brothers Humboldt in the field of physical 
investigation, have long attained a cosmopolitan celebrity, and a memoir of their lives 
cannot fail to possess the deepest interest for every intellectual reader. This is admirably 
accomplished in the present elegant volume." — Belfast News Letter. 

" This book is got up in the usual elegant style of its publishers." 

Birmingham Journal. 

" The lives of the great brothers are translated and arranged from the German, by 
Juliette Bauer, and we know not how much liberty she may have taken with the text of 
the authors, Klencke and Schlesier ; but this, at least, we can say, that her chapters read 
with all the fluency and clearness of original composition, and in many passages the text 
becomes eloquent and poetical as the theme rises in interest. One thing which makes 
these biographies more than usually readable, is the circumstance that many of the 
descriptions of places, persons, and phenomena, are given in the words of the brothers 
themselves, and, therefore, while we have a picture of their lives and labours, we have at 
the same time delightful glimpses into the inner life of their souls." — Glasgow Herald. 



LONDON: INGRAM, COOKE, & CO. 
14 



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The Salamandrine ; or, Love and Immortality. 

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Ditto, ditto, ditto, cloth, gilt edges, £1 Is. 

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The Origin and Progress of the Art of Writing. 

Being a Complete History of the Art in all the stages of its 
development, from the simple pictorial writing of the early 
Chinese and Mexicans, and the cuneiform inscriptions of the 
Assyrians, to the different styles of European MSS. from the 
6th to the 16th century, and the progress of ordinary writing 
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]N"oel Humphreys (Author of the " Illuminated Book of the 
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15 



BOOKS FOE PRESENTS— continued. 



Gems of Wood-Engraving. 

Containing upwards of One Hundred of the finest Specimens of 
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Men and Manners. 

By William Hazlitt. A Series of Sketches and Essays : On 
Reading New Books — Cant and Hypocrisy — Merry England — 
A Sun-Dial — Prejudice — Disagreeable People — Knowledge of 
the World — Fashion — Nicknames — Taste — Why the Heroes 
of Romance are Insipid — The Conversation of Lords— The 
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and a Chapter on Editors. In cloth, 2s. 
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The Illustrated London Cookery Book; 

The Housewife's best Adviser at Market, in the Kitchen, and 
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Thousand Eive Hundred Original Receipts, embracing the 
whole Science and Art of Cookery, selected with great care 
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Stafford, Baron Rothschild, &c. Demy 8vo, cloth, 6s. 

"We are bound, after a close inspection of its contents, to state that every 
housewife will find it a useful companion and a necessary addition to her domestic 
library." — Weekly Dispatch. 

NAPOLEON THE THIRD, EMPEROR OF THE FRENCH. 

Political Writings of Louis Napoleon Buonaparte. 

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These Volumes possess great interest. Among the more important Works of 
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SAVILL AND EDWARDS, PB1NTERS, CHAND03 STBEET, 

OOVENT GARDEN. 



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